Israel has no choice but to end the aliyah and repeal the Law of Return. The move is a decade overdue.
Around 1993 the Soviet Jewish aliyah ended, and there remained no pockets of potential Jewish immigrants anywhere in the world. The large Jewish Diaspora in America, Canada, Australia, and France is not going to move to Israel. Even in the unlikely event of an emergency, they would move to other Western countries rather than to Israel. Besides, Israel can always adopt emergency legislation to allow the American and European Jews to move in.
Since the early 1990s, aliyah has mostly brought in what it is hard to refrain from calling Jewish garbage: perfectly good Slavs who discovered a Jewish great-grandparent, Ethiopian Christians told by Sohnut that their remote ancestors were Jewish converts, Hindu pagans proselytized into Judaism, and the like.
Aliyah has become dangerous on two counts: converts and Arabs. Now Israel is struggling to stop the illegal black migrants. What do we do if they start embracing Judaism in Kenya? Would the blacks honestly go to a makeshift synagogue (probably financed by some American Jewish charity), honestly learn Judaism, honestly embrace it, honestly convert, and honestly practice it in their community for nine months as the current regulations stipulate? In three years, a potentially unlimited number of fresh Jews would knock at Israel’s door. The rabbinical conversion authorities can erect additional hurdles, but once the media saw the blacks practicing Judaism and stil being refused entrance to Israel, an outcry would force us to allow them into the country. Exactly this scenario took place with the black Falash Mura Christians, and is now unfolding with the “Bnei Menashe” Indian proselytes. Our country will be swarmed with true adherents to Judaism who, nonetheless, are fake Jews.
Judaism was never a matter of religion only. Jewish idolaters in Tanakhic times were Jews nonetheless. The Samaritans, who are perfect adherents to Judaism, were not considered Jewish and were rebuffed when they tried to join us in building the Second Temple. Several small kingdoms converted to Judaism, but as far as we know their residents did not assimilate into the Jewish nation.
This is the point: Jews are not only a religion, but also a nation. Anyone can join a religion, but a nation is defined by other traits: continuous traditions, common history and culture, and the appearance of its citizens. If this sounds racist, it’s not. Blacks and Indians are good in their own right, but I’m used to Jews being more or less white. There is no problem in assimilating a small number of black Jews—not the 2 percent of the population which the Israeli government has brought into our country—but I’m not prepared to see the Jewish nation suddenly become black. They lack our culture, our history, our look; they are not us.
Understand this: 90 percent of the world’s population is much poorer than the Israelis, and 80 percent are much poorer than Israel’s poorest. They would love to come here, and many of them have no problem with changing their religion or pagan beliefs to that end. If Jews decide to step onto the slippery path of welcoming proselytes, then at least welcome people who look like us: start proselytizing in Byelorussia, for example. At least, make Jews out of those who are accustomed to education and hard work, and who can join us in our developed economy.
The prophets predicted a day when all nations would recognize a Jewish God. We had lived to the end of times and that is happening now. Fine, but they don’t need to move to our Jerusalem. Let them feel themselves Jewish and live in the countries of their residence. After some centuries of persecution there, a history of survival and outsmarting their local detractors, today’s proselytes might indeed become like us—if not in their look, then in their behavioral patterns. But not today.
The Law of Return is also dangerous because of the Arabs. If Israel is an ethnically blind democracy, how come it welcomes Jews who have never lived here and refuses to re-admit the Arabs who lived here sixty years ago? Jewish refugees of 135 C.E. are allowed to return, but not the Arab refugees of 1948. Arabs and ultra-leftists have filed a number of such petitions with the Supreme Court, which so far refuses to hear them because there is no conceivable legal grounds for such blatant discrimination. The solution is to renounce Israel’s character as an ethnic-blind society—and even as a religion-blind or ancestry-blind society—but the lovers of Hellenistic democracy won’t allow that. So we have to close the loophole of the Law of Return before the Arabs rush through it.
A trickle of Jewish immigration can continue without the Law of Return, through nominal family reunion schemes. Israel practiced this kind of immigration with the USSR: Russian Jews received invitations from remote or non-existent Israeli aunts. Conducted under the close scrutiny of the Ministry of the Internal, such schemes would not allow Arabs into our country.
Repealing the Law of Return would make sense of the modern Jewish identity. The law certainly includes nihilist Jews, and thus dismisses the religious definition of Jewishness. By formally closing Israel to immigration, we will create an Israeli nation of Jews and semi-Jews, hopefully without Arabs. Israelis will be a polity, a political entity. They will prove their Jewishness by fighting for Israel and paying taxes here. In the Diaspora, political identification is not an option, and Jewishness will continue to be defined in purely religious terms.
Such a political and religious differentiation among Jews is nothing new. There were very different Jews of Israel and Judea, and later of Judea and Samaria. The communities of Jewish proselytes are welcome to strive in India or Ethiopia. But there is no room in Israel for a Tower of Babel.
Around 1993 the Soviet Jewish aliyah ended, and there remained no pockets of potential Jewish immigrants anywhere in the world. The large Jewish Diaspora in America, Canada, Australia, and France is not going to move to Israel. Even in the unlikely event of an emergency, they would move to other Western countries rather than to Israel. Besides, Israel can always adopt emergency legislation to allow the American and European Jews to move in.
Since the early 1990s, aliyah has mostly brought in what it is hard to refrain from calling Jewish garbage: perfectly good Slavs who discovered a Jewish great-grandparent, Ethiopian Christians told by Sohnut that their remote ancestors were Jewish converts, Hindu pagans proselytized into Judaism, and the like.
Aliyah has become dangerous on two counts: converts and Arabs. Now Israel is struggling to stop the illegal black migrants. What do we do if they start embracing Judaism in Kenya? Would the blacks honestly go to a makeshift synagogue (probably financed by some American Jewish charity), honestly learn Judaism, honestly embrace it, honestly convert, and honestly practice it in their community for nine months as the current regulations stipulate? In three years, a potentially unlimited number of fresh Jews would knock at Israel’s door. The rabbinical conversion authorities can erect additional hurdles, but once the media saw the blacks practicing Judaism and stil being refused entrance to Israel, an outcry would force us to allow them into the country. Exactly this scenario took place with the black Falash Mura Christians, and is now unfolding with the “Bnei Menashe” Indian proselytes. Our country will be swarmed with true adherents to Judaism who, nonetheless, are fake Jews.
Judaism was never a matter of religion only. Jewish idolaters in Tanakhic times were Jews nonetheless. The Samaritans, who are perfect adherents to Judaism, were not considered Jewish and were rebuffed when they tried to join us in building the Second Temple. Several small kingdoms converted to Judaism, but as far as we know their residents did not assimilate into the Jewish nation.
This is the point: Jews are not only a religion, but also a nation. Anyone can join a religion, but a nation is defined by other traits: continuous traditions, common history and culture, and the appearance of its citizens. If this sounds racist, it’s not. Blacks and Indians are good in their own right, but I’m used to Jews being more or less white. There is no problem in assimilating a small number of black Jews—not the 2 percent of the population which the Israeli government has brought into our country—but I’m not prepared to see the Jewish nation suddenly become black. They lack our culture, our history, our look; they are not us.
Understand this: 90 percent of the world’s population is much poorer than the Israelis, and 80 percent are much poorer than Israel’s poorest. They would love to come here, and many of them have no problem with changing their religion or pagan beliefs to that end. If Jews decide to step onto the slippery path of welcoming proselytes, then at least welcome people who look like us: start proselytizing in Byelorussia, for example. At least, make Jews out of those who are accustomed to education and hard work, and who can join us in our developed economy.
The prophets predicted a day when all nations would recognize a Jewish God. We had lived to the end of times and that is happening now. Fine, but they don’t need to move to our Jerusalem. Let them feel themselves Jewish and live in the countries of their residence. After some centuries of persecution there, a history of survival and outsmarting their local detractors, today’s proselytes might indeed become like us—if not in their look, then in their behavioral patterns. But not today.
The Law of Return is also dangerous because of the Arabs. If Israel is an ethnically blind democracy, how come it welcomes Jews who have never lived here and refuses to re-admit the Arabs who lived here sixty years ago? Jewish refugees of 135 C.E. are allowed to return, but not the Arab refugees of 1948. Arabs and ultra-leftists have filed a number of such petitions with the Supreme Court, which so far refuses to hear them because there is no conceivable legal grounds for such blatant discrimination. The solution is to renounce Israel’s character as an ethnic-blind society—and even as a religion-blind or ancestry-blind society—but the lovers of Hellenistic democracy won’t allow that. So we have to close the loophole of the Law of Return before the Arabs rush through it.
A trickle of Jewish immigration can continue without the Law of Return, through nominal family reunion schemes. Israel practiced this kind of immigration with the USSR: Russian Jews received invitations from remote or non-existent Israeli aunts. Conducted under the close scrutiny of the Ministry of the Internal, such schemes would not allow Arabs into our country.
Repealing the Law of Return would make sense of the modern Jewish identity. The law certainly includes nihilist Jews, and thus dismisses the religious definition of Jewishness. By formally closing Israel to immigration, we will create an Israeli nation of Jews and semi-Jews, hopefully without Arabs. Israelis will be a polity, a political entity. They will prove their Jewishness by fighting for Israel and paying taxes here. In the Diaspora, political identification is not an option, and Jewishness will continue to be defined in purely religious terms.
Such a political and religious differentiation among Jews is nothing new. There were very different Jews of Israel and Judea, and later of Judea and Samaria. The communities of Jewish proselytes are welcome to strive in India or Ethiopia. But there is no room in Israel for a Tower of Babel.
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