IDO HEVRONI RESPONDS:

Not surprisingly, perhaps, my essay gave rise to some controversy, partly because of the first word in the title—“circumcision”—and partly because of the last—“rebellion.” The commandment to circumcise is currently the focus of heated religious debate between those anxious to adhere to the legacy of their forefathers and those intent on changing it; and the term “rebellion”—at least in the context of the Bar Kochba rebellion—of a political one. Nonetheless, all those who responded to me presented, in one way or another, their alternatives to the ideas I identified in my article as fundamental Jewish principles. I must content myself here with a note on the place of such “alternatives” and their importance in the rabbinic literature.

It is a commonplace that for every talmudic opinion A, there exists a diametrically opposed but no less legitimate talmudic opinion B. The oft-quoted sentence on this matter is, “These and these are the words of the living God” (Eruvin 13b). Certainly, the rabbinic literature is the epitome of a variety of opinion, dissent, and dialogue. Yet, in the main, those using this quotation forget that “these and these” referred specifically to the long-running argument between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, and not, for example, to the one between Judaism and Christianity. Thus, one might certainly find disagreement among the sages about the time of Yom Kippur, but not about the time of the weekly day of rest; there may be disagreement about cooking chicken as opposed to beef in milk, but not about the permissibility of eating pork.

As for circumcision, whether you accept the testimony of the Bible concerning its divine source or prefer, like some scholars, the testimony of a Greek historian, it is evident that during the period discussed in my article, circumcision became a clear mark of Jewish identity. Not only is there no disagreement among the sages about its enforcement or interdiction, there is also no disagreement among Jewish groups outside the circles of the sages, not even during the hundreds of years of dispersion suffered by the Jewish nation after the Bar Kochba revolt. Indeed, even those scholars who question the view that setting the Jewish norm was always the prerogative of rabbinical Jewry—like, for example, E.P. Sanders—grant that circumcision is one of the basic principles that characterized the Jewish group in ancient times. Non-Jews, too, were of the same opinion: In Greek and Roman literature about Jews, “circumcised” is a synonym for “Jewish,” despite the fact that the Greeks and Romans knew of other nations whose custom it was to circumcise their male offspring.

Yisrael Rosenson’s letter, however, reveals a different aspect of rabbinic thought from the one I identified in my essay, and for this I am grateful to him. Against the interpretation in my essay, which posits a revolt against an existing state, Rosenson interprets a different but related talmudic story as promoting an approach of moderation and preservation. His interpretation can be further supported by other stories describing how, during the revolt, R. Yohanan ben Zakai preferred to negotiate a surrender with the Romans laying siege to Jerusalem, contrary to the desire of the zealots who were fighting them to the bitter end, out of a wish to preserve the world of the Tora.

Undoubtedly, devotion to tradition and the preservation of the status quo sustained the Jewish people in the diaspora no less than did insubordination and rebellion. Together, these two poles made Judaism what it is today: The instinct for preservation helped Judaism survive innumerable revolutions and cultural, political, and religious changes that consigned more powerful nations to the history books; while the drive for change and rebellion prevented it from fossilizing.

Nowhere is this dialectic more strikingly evident than in the strict observance of the commandment of circumcision: On the one hand, circumcision represents—according to the interpretation I offered in my essay—the drive for change, and on the other hand, its observance is often attributable to the opposite trait—the stubborn devotion to tradition, and the need to preserve it unchanged.

Thus may Rosenson’s response illustrate a contrary, but no less legitimate, Jewish opinion to the one I examined in my article. The opinions of those opposed to circumcision, however, would most certainly not have been considered “Jewish” in the period under discussion. Is there a place for them in Judaism today? The readers will judge for themselves.

A Search for June 1967

TO THE EDITORS:

Yossi Klein Halevi has written a touching and fascinating piece commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the Six Day War (“The Photograph: A Search for June 1967,” AZURE 29, Summer 2007). Reading the article, I thought of several news stories that also came out on the anniversary of the war, and how I had been struck by the way that, wherever Israelis quoted in those stories might have stood on the political spectrum, they shared a sense that the State of Israel, both in the fact of its existence and in the way it reveals itself in history, must have meaning for itself and for the world at large. How many nations on the globe, I wondered, drive their citizens to pursue that kind of imperative? Thus is Klein Halevi’s probing commentary on a photograph not only a search for June 1967. It is also a commentary on and rendering of the pursuit of meaning that characterizes and distinguishes the Israeli reality.

Michael C. Kotzin
Chicago, Illinois

Sovereignty

TO THE EDITORS:

Jeremy Rabkin, in his Law Without Nations? and Michla Pomerance (“Defending the S-Word,” AZURE 29, Summer 2007) both expose the myth that morality, peace, and human rights would be better served without national sovereignty. The slogans of “global governance” and “world federalism” emerged from the murderous extremes of European nationalism and racism during the twentieth century, in opposition to, rather than in support of, the principles of liberal democracy.

On this basis, the anti-democratic majority in the United Nations and the self-appointed moralists and ideologues who control wealthy non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have gained power without the accompanying accountability or responsibility. According to the dominant myth (called the “halo effect”), unelected NGO officials who control massive budgets are somehow morally superior, automatically credible, and immune to the private interests and dogmas of democratically elected representatives.

European governments (and, to some degree, Canada) are largely responsible for funding these political NGOs—a further reflection of the anti-sovereignty ideology. Aid agencies run by the European Union, as well as Britain, Sweden, France, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, and other countries (often funneled through church groups such as Christian Aid and DanChurchAid), provide millions of Euros in taxpayer funds to GNGOS (government non-governmental organizations). Europe is infatuated with “civil society,” based on the conceptually absurd belief that the officials of organizations that operate outside the system of checks and balances and are not subject to the democratic process are somehow less corrupt and more representative of the general welfare than elected officials.

These government funds are used to promote the private ideological agendas of NGO officials (including the anti-Israel and anti-American campaigns in Europe), and in efforts to manipulate the civil societies of other democratic countries. European taxpayers, for example, support dozens of Israeli political NGOs that actively oppose and campaign against the anti-terror policies chosen by the Israeli public and their elected representatives. B’tselem, Gisha, Bimkom, Peace Now, Yosi Beilin’s “Geneva Initiative,” and many more groups receive millions of shekels allocated by sympathetic European officials in order to initiate legal actions, publish reports, buy newspaper advertisements, and the like. The Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), a small NGO whose coordinator, Jeff Halper, travels the world demonizing Israel and supporting boycotts, received over 400,000 Euros under the misleading “EU Partnership for Peace” label.

The political power of politicized NGOs is particularly apparent in the “Durban strategy” adopted by the leaders of 1,500 organizations that participated in the infamous NGO Forum of the 2001 UN Conference on Racism, and in the vital role they played in legitimizing the 2002 Jenin “massacre” myth and promoting the UN General Assembly resolution that sent the “apartheid wall” to the misnamed International Court of Justice. Most recently, the Durban NGO network led the political war that accompanied Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, with the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) obsessively publishing over thirty reports, press releases, op-eds and other statements condemning Israeli military actions, using “facts” largely based on the unverifiable claims of local “eyewitnesses” and sympathetic journalists who happened to be in areas of Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah.

These and many similar examples highlight the illusion of an international legal system that lacks the legitimacy provided by national sovereignty and the consent of the governed. Many of the institutions that claim to embody international law, such as the International Court of Justice, are political bodies that reflect the problems and limitations of global governance. And in this vacuum, and without authoritative decisions, highly ideological NGO officials have used their power and access to media to become the arbiters of a highly particularistic version of international law.

While the campaign against Israel is the most damaging illustration of the impact of powerful NGOs working in concert with the majority of dictatorships in the United Nations, similar political wars are being fought against the democratically elected governments of the United States, Britain, Australia, and others. And NGOs are only one dimension of the efforts to promote institutions based on the amorphous and unaccountable “global governance” frameworks. Europe will eventually realize that while democratic sovereignty is far from perfect, it is (to paraphrase Churchill) better than all the other forms that have been tried. The question is whether this realization will come too late to preserve Europe’s own sovereignty.

Gerald M. Steinberg
Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv
NGO Monitor, Jerusalem

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