Normal and abnormal hatred
The hater suffers from a pathological, obsessive, preoccupation with the object of disdain
• By ELLIOT JAGER
Here’s what I hate (in no particular order): computer spam, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Jerusalem taxi drivers, a persistently annoying colleague, and the NIS 417,900 Hummer now being advertised in the newspapers.
I tried turning to the Bible for solace. But last week’s Torah portion had Simeon and Levi slaughtering every newly circumcised male in Shechem. And this week, Joseph’s brothers, seeing that Jacob loves him the most, hate him so passionately that – as the narrative begins – they can’t even bring themselves to greet him.
There’s no ignoring hate, but do we understand it?
Our sages were aware of the problem. They surmised that the uneducated riffraff hated the scholarly class even more than the gentiles hated the Jews. Just as the Eskimos have a nomenclature for snow, Jewish tradition categorizes all sorts of hatreds: hidden hate, hatred of justice, gratuitous hatred, and the particularly despised – self-hatred.
Maariv reported last week on a survey which found, not surprisingly after five gruesome years of Palestinian Arab belligerence, that topping the “most hated” list for nearly all Israelis were Palestinians. But 67 percent of leftists hated “settlers” even more than Palestinians.
Besides settlers, the Orthodox, haredim, leftists and Arab Israelis also scored high on being despised.
William Hazlitt, in an irreverent homage to the subject, The Pleasure of Hating (1826), says that “Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.”
For Hazlitt the pleasure of hating eats into everything. “Nature seems made up of antipathies: Without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action.”
The contemporary Romanian-born French philosopher E.M. Cioram agrees: “You are done for – a living dead man – not when you stop loving, but stop hating. Hatred preserves; in it, in its chemistry, resides the ‘mystery’ of life. Not for nothing is hatred still the best tonic ever discovered, for which any organism, however feeble, has tolerance.”
And for the writer Minna Antrim “To be loved is to be fortunate, but to be hated is to achieve distinction.”
THEN THERE is hatred of an entirely different order. Psychiatrist Willard Gaylin, in Hatred: The Psychological Descent into Violence, posits that the truly hazardous variety is not “normal to the human condition.”
Laypeople often confuse rage, prejudice or bigotry with authentic hatred. A key criteria, Gaylin says, is whether the hater suffers from a pathological, obsessive, preoccupation with the object of disdain.
Hatred is more than an emotion. Gaylin believes that most of us have never really experienced genuine clinical hatred. “We are not one with the terrorists. We do not experience that which they feel, nor are we likely to do what they do. The hatred that requires a defined enemy – the hatred that seeks the humiliation and destruction of that enemy and takes joy in it – is blessedly a rare phenomenon.”
For Gaylin, genuine hatred is a quasi-delusional condition, a mental disease. It’s the sick flip-side of love in that it, too, requires an object of attachment. “Obsessive hatred is by definition irrational. The choice of the victim is more often dictated by the unconscious needs and personal history of the hater than by the nature, or even the actions, of the hated.”
So, by Gaylin’s criteria, the intense dislike I have toward Jerusalem taxi drivers, or – I’d like to believe – the disdain some haredim feel toward Reform Jews, or the revulsion many American Reform Jews feel toward George W. Bush are unlikely to inspire real trouble. These “hatreds” are too mild, too ephemeral.
Ahmadinejad’s hatred, in contrast, is durable and relentless.
By claiming that the extermination of 6 million Jews during World War II was a “myth,” by urging European countries who “claim that they have killed Jews in World War II” to “provide the Zionist regime with a piece of Europe,” and by advocating that Israel be “wiped off the map” – I’d diagnose him a genuine malevolent, obsessive, quasi-delusional hater.
In Iran, as in the dysfunctional Palestinian territories, hatred appears to be the societal norm. Ahmadinejad’s hatred needs a self-reinforcing cultural milieu in which to incubate. Teheran’s ruling circle presumably provides that environment just as Palestinian society has long nurtured the pathological, self-defeating, hate manifested by the various Fatah groupings, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
It’s no accident that Ahmadinejad spent part of last week conferring with Hamas’s politburo chief, Khaled Mashal and heard that “The Palestinian nation, Hamas movement and the Islamic world appreciate the stands adopted by the Islamic Republic of Iran against the usurper regime of Israel.”
Nor does it surprise that left to their democratic druthers, Palestinians gave a landslide victory to Hamas in Thursday’s municipal elections, or that Farhat Abu Nidal, proud mother of two shahids (martyrs) is number 22 on the Hamas list for the Palestinian general elections.
Instances of profound hatred occurring among normal individuals or societies are regulated – by super-egos, parents and police. Civilized societies remove individuals whose pathological hatred can be certified as posing a danger.
But what do you do about entire polities mobilized by hate?
You start by recognizing their abnormality, and then you quarantine the madmen who rule them.
– From a December 19 Jerusalem Post column
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Ahmadinejad & Hate
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
CHABAD THEOLOGY & DAVID BERGER
Q&A with Historian David Berger
Veteran Brooklyn College History Professor David Berger has a reputation for being both a scholar and an outstanding lecturer. A kippa-wearing Orthodox Jew, Berger received rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University. Despite his soft-spoken scholarly demeanor, Berger is passionate about his expose of Chabad. It is, he says, of 'transcendent importance.'
Q) Does mainstream Chabad really believe that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is a Jesus-like diety?
A) Religious mentors in the major yeshivas of Chabad in both Israel and the United States, publications issued by mainstream Chabad, and influential, highly educated Lubavitch laymen, take the following assertions literally: The supremely righteous, of whom the Rebbe and Moses are the chief exemplars, annul their own essence to the point where their entire Essence is that of God. It is permissible to bow to them with this understanding. For this reason, the Rebbe is omniscient, omnipotent, and entirely without limits. He is 'indistinguishable' from God.
Q) Because he is a transparent window for pure divinity, a 'man-God,' 'when you speak to him, you speak to God.'
A) There are Chabad hasidim who reject such formulations but there is no question that these beliefs are well represented in the mainstream.
Q) Nevertheless, what about those who insist that Chabad's messianist camp is a minority faction? Regrettably, this assertion is pure propaganda. In Crown Heights, the main synagogue at Lubavitch headquarters is a messianist stronghold where the Rebbe's messiahship is proclaimed at every prayer service.
The Rabbinic court is messianist; the largest men's school (Oholei Torah/Oholei Menachem), the women's seminary Machon Chanah, and other educational institutions are shot through with messianism; the messianist slogan is on a banner posted on the headquarters of the Chabad Women's Organization; and much more.
In Israel, the rabbi of Kfar Chabad signed a rabbinic ruling that Jewish law requires belief in the Rebbe's Messiahship, and the major columnist of the journal Beis Moshiach is a mentor in Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim there.
The large Chabad school system in Safed teaches the Rebbe's Messiahship.
Over 60 Israeli rabbis, including chief rabbis of several towns, signed the messianist ruling.
The situation among emissaries is somewhat better, but that ruling was signed by many of them, including the Chief Rabbi of the former Soviet Union and 16 of the major emissaries there. There are indeed non-messianists in Chabad, but they are clearly outnumbered.
Q) People joke that 'Chabad is the religion closest to Judaism.' Why take their theology so seriously?
The inclination to joke about this development is one of many reasons for the failure of mainstream Orthodoxy to act. In fact, Chabad is a movement of monumental importance. Observant Jews are profoundly dependent on its emissaries all over the world, it plays a major role in kosher food preparation and supervision worldwide, its rabbis dominate or are poised to dominate Jewish communities in a startling number of countries.
While your question reflects a widely held perception, that perception is so off the mark as to be the near opposite of the truth.
It will be exceedingly difficult to save Judaism from this catastrophe precisely because of the central role of Chabad in Jewish life.
Q) If that's the case, why don't Orthodox authorities speak out? Have any disassociated themselves from Chabad?
A) I devote an entire chapter - 'Explaining the Inexplicable' - to this question, and the forthcoming issue of Modern Judaism will publish a somewhat elaborated version entitled 'The Fragility of Religious Doctrine: Accounting for Orthodox Acquiescence in the Belief in a Second Coming.'
Among the reasons for this acquiescence are: The 'good things' done by the movement, the desire for unity, the dependence on Chabad, the conviction that this is a transient insanity, a blinkered concern with one's own subgroup, and the instinct that people who look and behave like hassidim must be Orthodox Jews. Moreover, Orthodox education no longer focuses on polemical literature against messianic Christianity. There is a startling degree of theological relativism among even very Orthodox Jews.
'Judaism,' I write in the book 'which was once a great faith, is now an agglomeration of dress, deportment and ritual.' Add to all this the financial and political influence of Chabad, and the difficulty of waging this battle is thrown into even bolder relief.
Q) Nevertheless, don't you agree that bringing lost soul's to Chabad's brand of Judaism is better than having them lost to Judaism altogether?
A) A reasonable question. One of the major obstacles I face is the need to convince people that it's the wrong question.
The answer to this question is 'yes,' though the answer becomes less unequivocal if we are speaking about belief in the Rebbe as divine. In fact, we face a very different question.
Is it acceptable to smash the boundaries of the faith to pieces if doing this will attract thousands or even hundreds of thousands of irreligious Jews to the transformed religion?
Recognizing Chabad messianists as Orthodox rabbis in good standing abolishes Judaism's criteria for identifying the Messiah and awards victory to Christianity on a key issue in the historic Jewish-Christian debate.
One does not undermine Judaism in order to save it.
[Berger was my professor at Brooklyn College back in the 1970s]
Veteran Brooklyn College History Professor David Berger has a reputation for being both a scholar and an outstanding lecturer. A kippa-wearing Orthodox Jew, Berger received rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University. Despite his soft-spoken scholarly demeanor, Berger is passionate about his expose of Chabad. It is, he says, of 'transcendent importance.'
Q) Does mainstream Chabad really believe that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is a Jesus-like diety?
A) Religious mentors in the major yeshivas of Chabad in both Israel and the United States, publications issued by mainstream Chabad, and influential, highly educated Lubavitch laymen, take the following assertions literally: The supremely righteous, of whom the Rebbe and Moses are the chief exemplars, annul their own essence to the point where their entire Essence is that of God. It is permissible to bow to them with this understanding. For this reason, the Rebbe is omniscient, omnipotent, and entirely without limits. He is 'indistinguishable' from God.
Q) Because he is a transparent window for pure divinity, a 'man-God,' 'when you speak to him, you speak to God.'
A) There are Chabad hasidim who reject such formulations but there is no question that these beliefs are well represented in the mainstream.
Q) Nevertheless, what about those who insist that Chabad's messianist camp is a minority faction? Regrettably, this assertion is pure propaganda. In Crown Heights, the main synagogue at Lubavitch headquarters is a messianist stronghold where the Rebbe's messiahship is proclaimed at every prayer service.
The Rabbinic court is messianist; the largest men's school (Oholei Torah/Oholei Menachem), the women's seminary Machon Chanah, and other educational institutions are shot through with messianism; the messianist slogan is on a banner posted on the headquarters of the Chabad Women's Organization; and much more.
In Israel, the rabbi of Kfar Chabad signed a rabbinic ruling that Jewish law requires belief in the Rebbe's Messiahship, and the major columnist of the journal Beis Moshiach is a mentor in Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim there.
The large Chabad school system in Safed teaches the Rebbe's Messiahship.
Over 60 Israeli rabbis, including chief rabbis of several towns, signed the messianist ruling.
The situation among emissaries is somewhat better, but that ruling was signed by many of them, including the Chief Rabbi of the former Soviet Union and 16 of the major emissaries there. There are indeed non-messianists in Chabad, but they are clearly outnumbered.
Q) People joke that 'Chabad is the religion closest to Judaism.' Why take their theology so seriously?
The inclination to joke about this development is one of many reasons for the failure of mainstream Orthodoxy to act. In fact, Chabad is a movement of monumental importance. Observant Jews are profoundly dependent on its emissaries all over the world, it plays a major role in kosher food preparation and supervision worldwide, its rabbis dominate or are poised to dominate Jewish communities in a startling number of countries.
While your question reflects a widely held perception, that perception is so off the mark as to be the near opposite of the truth.
It will be exceedingly difficult to save Judaism from this catastrophe precisely because of the central role of Chabad in Jewish life.
Q) If that's the case, why don't Orthodox authorities speak out? Have any disassociated themselves from Chabad?
A) I devote an entire chapter - 'Explaining the Inexplicable' - to this question, and the forthcoming issue of Modern Judaism will publish a somewhat elaborated version entitled 'The Fragility of Religious Doctrine: Accounting for Orthodox Acquiescence in the Belief in a Second Coming.'
Among the reasons for this acquiescence are: The 'good things' done by the movement, the desire for unity, the dependence on Chabad, the conviction that this is a transient insanity, a blinkered concern with one's own subgroup, and the instinct that people who look and behave like hassidim must be Orthodox Jews. Moreover, Orthodox education no longer focuses on polemical literature against messianic Christianity. There is a startling degree of theological relativism among even very Orthodox Jews.
'Judaism,' I write in the book 'which was once a great faith, is now an agglomeration of dress, deportment and ritual.' Add to all this the financial and political influence of Chabad, and the difficulty of waging this battle is thrown into even bolder relief.
Q) Nevertheless, don't you agree that bringing lost soul's to Chabad's brand of Judaism is better than having them lost to Judaism altogether?
A) A reasonable question. One of the major obstacles I face is the need to convince people that it's the wrong question.
The answer to this question is 'yes,' though the answer becomes less unequivocal if we are speaking about belief in the Rebbe as divine. In fact, we face a very different question.
Is it acceptable to smash the boundaries of the faith to pieces if doing this will attract thousands or even hundreds of thousands of irreligious Jews to the transformed religion?
Recognizing Chabad messianists as Orthodox rabbis in good standing abolishes Judaism's criteria for identifying the Messiah and awards victory to Christianity on a key issue in the historic Jewish-Christian debate.
One does not undermine Judaism in order to save it.
[Berger was my professor at Brooklyn College back in the 1970s]
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
VENICE, THE JEWS & CHABAD
Back to the ghetto
• By ELLIOT JAGER
A recent visit to Venice tells me that, for many Jews, ritual and a sense of connection to Jewish civilization override theology.
I had heard that Venice was a place of romance; a magical city built on canals. But once there, we also discovered Venice's 'Jewish problem.' Two factions - one foreign, small and missionizing, the other indigenous, threatened and struggling - are engaged in a love-hate relationship.
Jews began to settle in the area in the 13th century. Venice's economic elite needed them; the Church despised them. Which is how it came to be that on March 29, 1516 the Venetian Council of Ten established the world's first ghetto for their 700 Jews:
'The Jews must all live together... in order to prevent their roaming about at night: Let there be built two Gates... which ...shall be opened in the morning... and closed at midnight by four Christian guards appointed and paid by the Jews....'
Predictably, it was to this ghetto to which we were drawn for our 'getaway' from the pressures of life in Israel. We checked into the Locanda del Ghetto Hotel. Outside our window was the ghetto courtyard where today the frailties of, and contending hopes for Jewish life in Venice play themselves out. Here is the center of the established community, whose religious life is led by Chief Rabbi Elia Richetti, as well as the power base of Chabad-Lubavitch's Rami Banin.
Both are sympathetic characters; both Italian-born, both Orthodox.
But Richetti is the conservative. He wants to preserve the local community and minister to its 300 faithful. The 300,000 Jewish tourists who visit the ghetto annually interest him only mildly.
For Banin those tourists are everything. The Chabad emissary has flawless Hebrew and American-accented English. He's singularly dedicated to spreading the rebbe's message.
The official community or kehilla 'shares' the courtyard and its environs with Lubavitch. Its Jewish museum daily draws scores of visitors - Jewish and non-Jewish alike - and is a gateway to the ghetto's five historic synagogues. There are also an old age home, art galleries, tourist shops and a kosher bakery/grocery. There's an eruv and even a mikve.
But it is Chabad's in-your-face presence that appropriates the limelight: A storefront yeshiva for a dozen American and Israeli rabbinical students, an outreach center, and the strategically located Lubavitch-run Gam-Gam restaurant.
I davened several mornings with Chabad, praying opposite a picture of the rebbe and a wall adorned with the messianic catchphrase: Yehi adoneinu moreinu v'rabbeinu melech ha'moshiah l'olam vaed! (Long live our master, teacher, and rabbi, the King Messiah, for ever and ever.)
The official community distances itself from Chabad, though Richetti sometimes turns to the yeshiva boys for a minyan and certifies Gam-Gam's kashrut. As both pulpit rabbi and neighborhood coordinator, he's proud that some 20 families order meat and other kosher provisions from Milan.
The kehilla stays afloat thanks to a combination of state aid, a communal tax, and property revenue - not to mention tourism.
MEANWHILE, SLOWLY, methodically, Chabad appears committed to usurping Judaism in Venice. But this is not Bangkok; there's an indigenous community that won't roll over and die.
Chabad appears to have deep pockets. It set up shop 12 years ago and now plans to open a kindergarten (to compete with the kehilla's kindergarten attended by 12 youngsters). Richetti notes that no Jewish child has been born in Venice in three years, and is suspicious of Chabad's intentions.
But to this outsider, the competition seems like a plus.
I came to Venice with grudging admiration for Chabad. Yes, I know it's a cult dependent on the charismatic 'presence' of the rebbe, but I'd rather see Jews hook up with Chabad than with Hare Krishna. If the alternative is nihilism and alienation, I can live with Chabad's remedy. At the same time, I'm intolerant of Chabad's ability to get away with promulgating the heresy that the rebbe, who died in 1994, is the Living Messiah.
But that's theology. Let's talk supper.
After Friday night prayers in one of the historic but melancholy-looking synagogues, we went off to Gam-Gam (with its Crown Heights decor), where we experienced an evening of charm, warmth, and song. Maybe you have to be a member of the tribe to appreciate how good it feels to be gazing at a Venetian canal while singing Friday-night zemirot in the company of 150 Jews of all stripes, lands, and levels of affiliation, enjoying a free, bountiful meal waited upon by rabbis-in-training.
You'd have to be an ingrate not to appreciate Chabad's presence in Venice. I'm told that in the summer, tables are set up along the adjacent canal front to accommodate the hundreds of visiting Jews, some experiencing their first-ever Shabbat meal.
Yet I doubt Chabad is converting very many to their schismatic brand of Judaism. Eating with Lubavitch in Venice highlighted for me that what people are looking for is not theology, but ritual and Jewish camaraderie.
Travelers ready to embrace a Jewish experience don't want to think about the relationship between the Creator and the universe. What they want is an exotic synagogue service, a touch of history, and afterwards cholent, song, and companionship.
There's an outreach lesson here other streams of Judaism may want to emulate.
– From a November 15 Jerusalem Post column
• By ELLIOT JAGER
A recent visit to Venice tells me that, for many Jews, ritual and a sense of connection to Jewish civilization override theology.
I had heard that Venice was a place of romance; a magical city built on canals. But once there, we also discovered Venice's 'Jewish problem.' Two factions - one foreign, small and missionizing, the other indigenous, threatened and struggling - are engaged in a love-hate relationship.
Jews began to settle in the area in the 13th century. Venice's economic elite needed them; the Church despised them. Which is how it came to be that on March 29, 1516 the Venetian Council of Ten established the world's first ghetto for their 700 Jews:
'The Jews must all live together... in order to prevent their roaming about at night: Let there be built two Gates... which ...shall be opened in the morning... and closed at midnight by four Christian guards appointed and paid by the Jews....'
Predictably, it was to this ghetto to which we were drawn for our 'getaway' from the pressures of life in Israel. We checked into the Locanda del Ghetto Hotel. Outside our window was the ghetto courtyard where today the frailties of, and contending hopes for Jewish life in Venice play themselves out. Here is the center of the established community, whose religious life is led by Chief Rabbi Elia Richetti, as well as the power base of Chabad-Lubavitch's Rami Banin.
Both are sympathetic characters; both Italian-born, both Orthodox.
But Richetti is the conservative. He wants to preserve the local community and minister to its 300 faithful. The 300,000 Jewish tourists who visit the ghetto annually interest him only mildly.
For Banin those tourists are everything. The Chabad emissary has flawless Hebrew and American-accented English. He's singularly dedicated to spreading the rebbe's message.
The official community or kehilla 'shares' the courtyard and its environs with Lubavitch. Its Jewish museum daily draws scores of visitors - Jewish and non-Jewish alike - and is a gateway to the ghetto's five historic synagogues. There are also an old age home, art galleries, tourist shops and a kosher bakery/grocery. There's an eruv and even a mikve.
But it is Chabad's in-your-face presence that appropriates the limelight: A storefront yeshiva for a dozen American and Israeli rabbinical students, an outreach center, and the strategically located Lubavitch-run Gam-Gam restaurant.
I davened several mornings with Chabad, praying opposite a picture of the rebbe and a wall adorned with the messianic catchphrase: Yehi adoneinu moreinu v'rabbeinu melech ha'moshiah l'olam vaed! (Long live our master, teacher, and rabbi, the King Messiah, for ever and ever.)
The official community distances itself from Chabad, though Richetti sometimes turns to the yeshiva boys for a minyan and certifies Gam-Gam's kashrut. As both pulpit rabbi and neighborhood coordinator, he's proud that some 20 families order meat and other kosher provisions from Milan.
The kehilla stays afloat thanks to a combination of state aid, a communal tax, and property revenue - not to mention tourism.
MEANWHILE, SLOWLY, methodically, Chabad appears committed to usurping Judaism in Venice. But this is not Bangkok; there's an indigenous community that won't roll over and die.
Chabad appears to have deep pockets. It set up shop 12 years ago and now plans to open a kindergarten (to compete with the kehilla's kindergarten attended by 12 youngsters). Richetti notes that no Jewish child has been born in Venice in three years, and is suspicious of Chabad's intentions.
But to this outsider, the competition seems like a plus.
I came to Venice with grudging admiration for Chabad. Yes, I know it's a cult dependent on the charismatic 'presence' of the rebbe, but I'd rather see Jews hook up with Chabad than with Hare Krishna. If the alternative is nihilism and alienation, I can live with Chabad's remedy. At the same time, I'm intolerant of Chabad's ability to get away with promulgating the heresy that the rebbe, who died in 1994, is the Living Messiah.
But that's theology. Let's talk supper.
After Friday night prayers in one of the historic but melancholy-looking synagogues, we went off to Gam-Gam (with its Crown Heights decor), where we experienced an evening of charm, warmth, and song. Maybe you have to be a member of the tribe to appreciate how good it feels to be gazing at a Venetian canal while singing Friday-night zemirot in the company of 150 Jews of all stripes, lands, and levels of affiliation, enjoying a free, bountiful meal waited upon by rabbis-in-training.
You'd have to be an ingrate not to appreciate Chabad's presence in Venice. I'm told that in the summer, tables are set up along the adjacent canal front to accommodate the hundreds of visiting Jews, some experiencing their first-ever Shabbat meal.
Yet I doubt Chabad is converting very many to their schismatic brand of Judaism. Eating with Lubavitch in Venice highlighted for me that what people are looking for is not theology, but ritual and Jewish camaraderie.
Travelers ready to embrace a Jewish experience don't want to think about the relationship between the Creator and the universe. What they want is an exotic synagogue service, a touch of history, and afterwards cholent, song, and companionship.
There's an outreach lesson here other streams of Judaism may want to emulate.
– From a November 15 Jerusalem Post column
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
SHMUEL KATZ & JOBOTINSKY
Jabotinsky's hassid
• By ELLIOT JAGER
Shmuel Katz is probably the last remaining link to Ze'ev Jabotinsky outside the prophet's own relations. Last week, on the occasion of his forthcoming 90th birthday on December 9, I went to Tel Aviv to see him.
It was the week in which the remnants of the Jabotinsky movement suffered yet another blow with Uzi Landau's defeat in the race for the Likud Central Committee chairmanship.
'Jabotinsky's photograph should be taken down from the wall of Likud headquarters. I don't want him to 'see' and 'hear' what goes on there,' says Katz.
The Johannesburg-born polemicist, slowed down physically by the infirmities of age - poor circulation in his legs and the after-effects of a stroke - now resides in an agreeable 'assisted living' facility. It's hard for Katz to get around, but his intellectual powers, and ideological steadfastness, remain strong.
A lapsed Jabotinskyte, I wonder aloud if the shifting facts on the ground - the past four years of war, Palestinian demographics, the polarization within Israeli society over the territories, and the constellation of international forces - should not lead us to rethink our stance.
Isn't Ariel Sharon right that a tactical withdrawal - 7,000 Jews from among 1 million Arabs - is militarily and diplomatically wise?
No sooner do I phrase the question than I realize how trifling my litany of contemporary challenges must sound to a man whom Jabotinsky himself sent to London in 1940 to propagate the cause.
Yet Katz isn't irritated. He simply outlines the unshakable truth: 'Leave Gaza, and Jews will be killed in Ashkelon.
'The Arabs have launched a war and we are responding as if it is some kind of squabble. When they say they want to get rid of Israel, that we have no right to exist, they mean it.'
A knock on the door. A nurse enters to administer eye drops and examine Katz's especially bothersome left leg.
When she leaves, the former member of the Irgun high command ('minister of foreign affairs, you might say') concludes his thought:
'Gaza won't be the end of our concessions. Watch.'
So what's the answer?
'There is nothing more left to do except to keep fighting them.
'We can win the war. We just have not won yet.'
WHILE MUCH of the secular Right has mellowed - in Sharon's case shifting to the center - those who have remained steadfast in their 'not one inch' worldview come largely from the theological, sometimes apocalyptic Right.
I ask Katz how this sits with him given that Jabotinsky was a 19th-century liberal, a rationalist and individualist.
Katz admits he has long been wary of Orthodox motivations. He has never forgotten that the religious - Zionist and non-Zionist - collaborated with Labor.
'Yes, they do cause me worry. I would have liked to put a number of questions to them.
'I can only hope Uzi Landau doesn't buckle,' and that, somehow, it is the secular Right that prevails within Likud.
Though he is not devout, Katz believes profoundly that the Land of Israel was given to the Jewish people. That unshakable faith comes not from scripture, but from the 1920 British Mandate.
'Read it.'
I do. The mandate system was established in international law by the Treaty of Versailles in 1922. It charged Britain with 'putting into effect' the 1917 Balfour Declaration; called for 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,' and recognized 'the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine' and 'reconstituting their national home in that country.'
Whatever history's twists and turns, Katz sees no point in ceding any of the rights bestowed by the Mandate.
Is such rock-solid ideology out of touch with today's realities? Maybe. But sitting opposite the man in his small sunny room cluttered with mugs, books, two telephones, newspapers, and writing pads - though remarkably few personal mementos - I reflect on his extraordinary career.
After the Irgun, he joined Menachem Begin's Herut Party, serving in Israel's first Knesset. Katz and Begin did not get on; each felt the other was laying (false) claim to be the true inheritor of Jabotinsky's mantle.
Disappointed with Begin's leadership Katz quit politics. From 1951 to 1977 he ran the Karni publishing house and brought out the Megiddo Hebrew & English Dictionary.
In 1977, when voters finally broke Labor's monopoly on power and elected Begin prime minister, the two rivals reconciled. But Begin rejected Katz's advice to create a powerful hasbara ministry and their brief rapprochement collapsed.
All the while Katz has been faithfully articulating the Jabotinsky line. Battleground is probably the finest Zionist polemical tract published; Days of Fire is the story of the Irgun; The Hollow Peace is a denunciation of Begin's concessions to Anwar Sadat. Lone Wolf, his latest book, is Katz's magnum opus, a two-volume biography of Jabotinsky.
Katz is nothing if not persevering. He's just sent off an op-ed warning that 'a Palestinian state will be the launching pad for the next phase of the campaign for all of Palestine.'
Till 120, Mr. Katz.
– From a November 29, 2004 Jerusalem Post column
• By ELLIOT JAGER
Shmuel Katz is probably the last remaining link to Ze'ev Jabotinsky outside the prophet's own relations. Last week, on the occasion of his forthcoming 90th birthday on December 9, I went to Tel Aviv to see him.
It was the week in which the remnants of the Jabotinsky movement suffered yet another blow with Uzi Landau's defeat in the race for the Likud Central Committee chairmanship.
'Jabotinsky's photograph should be taken down from the wall of Likud headquarters. I don't want him to 'see' and 'hear' what goes on there,' says Katz.
The Johannesburg-born polemicist, slowed down physically by the infirmities of age - poor circulation in his legs and the after-effects of a stroke - now resides in an agreeable 'assisted living' facility. It's hard for Katz to get around, but his intellectual powers, and ideological steadfastness, remain strong.
A lapsed Jabotinskyte, I wonder aloud if the shifting facts on the ground - the past four years of war, Palestinian demographics, the polarization within Israeli society over the territories, and the constellation of international forces - should not lead us to rethink our stance.
Isn't Ariel Sharon right that a tactical withdrawal - 7,000 Jews from among 1 million Arabs - is militarily and diplomatically wise?
No sooner do I phrase the question than I realize how trifling my litany of contemporary challenges must sound to a man whom Jabotinsky himself sent to London in 1940 to propagate the cause.
Yet Katz isn't irritated. He simply outlines the unshakable truth: 'Leave Gaza, and Jews will be killed in Ashkelon.
'The Arabs have launched a war and we are responding as if it is some kind of squabble. When they say they want to get rid of Israel, that we have no right to exist, they mean it.'
A knock on the door. A nurse enters to administer eye drops and examine Katz's especially bothersome left leg.
When she leaves, the former member of the Irgun high command ('minister of foreign affairs, you might say') concludes his thought:
'Gaza won't be the end of our concessions. Watch.'
So what's the answer?
'There is nothing more left to do except to keep fighting them.
'We can win the war. We just have not won yet.'
WHILE MUCH of the secular Right has mellowed - in Sharon's case shifting to the center - those who have remained steadfast in their 'not one inch' worldview come largely from the theological, sometimes apocalyptic Right.
I ask Katz how this sits with him given that Jabotinsky was a 19th-century liberal, a rationalist and individualist.
Katz admits he has long been wary of Orthodox motivations. He has never forgotten that the religious - Zionist and non-Zionist - collaborated with Labor.
'Yes, they do cause me worry. I would have liked to put a number of questions to them.
'I can only hope Uzi Landau doesn't buckle,' and that, somehow, it is the secular Right that prevails within Likud.
Though he is not devout, Katz believes profoundly that the Land of Israel was given to the Jewish people. That unshakable faith comes not from scripture, but from the 1920 British Mandate.
'Read it.'
I do. The mandate system was established in international law by the Treaty of Versailles in 1922. It charged Britain with 'putting into effect' the 1917 Balfour Declaration; called for 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,' and recognized 'the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine' and 'reconstituting their national home in that country.'
Whatever history's twists and turns, Katz sees no point in ceding any of the rights bestowed by the Mandate.
Is such rock-solid ideology out of touch with today's realities? Maybe. But sitting opposite the man in his small sunny room cluttered with mugs, books, two telephones, newspapers, and writing pads - though remarkably few personal mementos - I reflect on his extraordinary career.
After the Irgun, he joined Menachem Begin's Herut Party, serving in Israel's first Knesset. Katz and Begin did not get on; each felt the other was laying (false) claim to be the true inheritor of Jabotinsky's mantle.
Disappointed with Begin's leadership Katz quit politics. From 1951 to 1977 he ran the Karni publishing house and brought out the Megiddo Hebrew & English Dictionary.
In 1977, when voters finally broke Labor's monopoly on power and elected Begin prime minister, the two rivals reconciled. But Begin rejected Katz's advice to create a powerful hasbara ministry and their brief rapprochement collapsed.
All the while Katz has been faithfully articulating the Jabotinsky line. Battleground is probably the finest Zionist polemical tract published; Days of Fire is the story of the Irgun; The Hollow Peace is a denunciation of Begin's concessions to Anwar Sadat. Lone Wolf, his latest book, is Katz's magnum opus, a two-volume biography of Jabotinsky.
Katz is nothing if not persevering. He's just sent off an op-ed warning that 'a Palestinian state will be the launching pad for the next phase of the campaign for all of Palestine.'
Till 120, Mr. Katz.
– From a November 29, 2004 Jerusalem Post column
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
NEWSPAPERS NOT THE INTERNET
Save my job - read a newspaper
• By ELLIOT JAGER
The crumbling front page in my hand is from the October 7, 1973 Sunday New York Times. The headline - which runs across eight columns and two lines - reads: 'Arabs and Israelis Battle on Two Fronts; Egyptians Bridge Suez; Air Duels Intense.'
This is not a facsimile. It's the genuine newspaper saved all these years.
I am a newspaper junkie. In addition to thousands of clippings from the pre-Google era, there are about a dozen vintage newspapers in my archive: like the Times from Tuesday, June 9, 1981: 'Israeli Jets Destroy Atomic Reactor; Attack Condemned by US and Arab Nations;' and the one from Monday, February 12, 1979: 'A Khomeini Victory.'
Why this trip down memory lane? Because newspapers, with which I became enamored in high-school and through which I earn a living today, are supposedly going the way of black-and-white television and the eight-track cassette.
If true, this is a bad thing because traditional newspapers offer information in a format that cannot be duplicated by radio, television - or the Web.
As the Post's Yehezkel Laing reported on Friday, fewer and fewer Israelis are reading - forget about subscribing to - the Hebrew dailies. Only a handful of the people I know have any newspaper delivered.
It's a global phenomenon. Americans bought more newspapers in 1960 than they did in 2003. Only 6% of young Americans subscribe to a weekday newspaper; even among the over-45 crowd a paltry 30 percent read the dailies.
Still, newspapers everywhere claim to 'penetrate' the population. Sixty percent of Israelis, 57% of Americans, and 70% of Brits are said to be exposed to daily newspapers, perhaps at the office, barber shop or cafe.
The Friday weekend editions remain popular with Israelis - many petrol stations offer you a free paper when you gas up - though even weekend readership is dropping.
When I ask folks why they don't read a newspaper they say they don't have time, or the news is out of date by the time they get to the paper, or they'd rather not know what's going on.
Well, I'm trying to make a living here, folks, and this kind of thinking isn't helping.
TO THE people who don't want to know the news, all I can say is, please don't vote come election day. And to those who don't want a daily paper on their doorstep because it may contain views they disagree with: If you crave serenity, go live in a ashram.
On the other hand, I do sympathize with people who say they just don't have time for a daily newspaper. Anyone who lurches to work on a Dan or Egged bus could hardly be expected to read a paper as well, though heroically some try.
Still, organizing time is a matter of priorities. Previous generations didn't have the time-saving conveniences we enjoy; yet our parents and grandparents made time, not just for a morning paper, but often for an afternoon one as well.
True, news breaks between the time a paper goes to print and the time it's delivered to your door. Which is why the Web does serve a 'breaking news' function. It is also a great way to peruse out-of-town newspapers.
But neither radio, introduced in the 1920s, nor cable television news, which came on-stream in 1982 - or today's Wi-Fi Internet - can supplant newspapers. Because in an age of information overload, newspapers give you not only the 'who, what, where and when' but also the 'why-this-matters' context that is so necessary to be truly informed. By scanning the front page of a quality newspaper you also get a good sense about what's really important.
But why not read the newspaper for free - as most are - on the Web? Because people don't read articles on computer screens with the attention hard-copy newspapers demand and the comprehension they elicit.
The medium via which information is imparted influences how it will be comprehended. Reading a newspaper on the Web is like drinking skim milk. You can fool yourself into thinking you've had the real thing, but you haven't. And at many newspapers (though not this one), there's little connection between the Web site and the editorial side.
Moreover, the role of the media goes beyond reporting news to serving as a tool for political socialization. It is through the media that political values are inculcated. The media instruct citizens as to what events mean for them as individuals. And it is the media which seek to persuade, through editorials and coverage, what people should think.
For instance, the media in modern Germany promote zero-tolerance toward neo-Nazis - which some might call bias, but I call responsible journalism.
The question is, should we entrust such responsibilities to a bunch of geeks slapping the news on the Web at breakneck speed, or to journalists working under the checks and balances of seasoned editors? (The Post's Web site is actually run by the paper's editorial department.)
Enlightened readers know that newspapers provide the breadth and depth the electronic media alone can't duplicate. And advertisers know it too. The Newspaper Association of America reported that advertising expenditures for the fourth quarter of 2004 increased by 4.2% over the same period a year earlier. Savvy advertisers want to reach people who go beyond 'click and scroll.'
I'm not a Luddite. All I am saying is that when it comes to newspapers, technology can only take you so far. Perhaps the ideal way to read a paper that's not locally available is by subscribing to the page-by-page electronic facsimile.
Combining Wi-Fi and a facsimile allows you, at last, to take your digital newspaper into the toilet - just like the genuine article.
– From a March 7, 2005 Jerusalem Post column
• By ELLIOT JAGER
The crumbling front page in my hand is from the October 7, 1973 Sunday New York Times. The headline - which runs across eight columns and two lines - reads: 'Arabs and Israelis Battle on Two Fronts; Egyptians Bridge Suez; Air Duels Intense.'
This is not a facsimile. It's the genuine newspaper saved all these years.
I am a newspaper junkie. In addition to thousands of clippings from the pre-Google era, there are about a dozen vintage newspapers in my archive: like the Times from Tuesday, June 9, 1981: 'Israeli Jets Destroy Atomic Reactor; Attack Condemned by US and Arab Nations;' and the one from Monday, February 12, 1979: 'A Khomeini Victory.'
Why this trip down memory lane? Because newspapers, with which I became enamored in high-school and through which I earn a living today, are supposedly going the way of black-and-white television and the eight-track cassette.
If true, this is a bad thing because traditional newspapers offer information in a format that cannot be duplicated by radio, television - or the Web.
As the Post's Yehezkel Laing reported on Friday, fewer and fewer Israelis are reading - forget about subscribing to - the Hebrew dailies. Only a handful of the people I know have any newspaper delivered.
It's a global phenomenon. Americans bought more newspapers in 1960 than they did in 2003. Only 6% of young Americans subscribe to a weekday newspaper; even among the over-45 crowd a paltry 30 percent read the dailies.
Still, newspapers everywhere claim to 'penetrate' the population. Sixty percent of Israelis, 57% of Americans, and 70% of Brits are said to be exposed to daily newspapers, perhaps at the office, barber shop or cafe.
The Friday weekend editions remain popular with Israelis - many petrol stations offer you a free paper when you gas up - though even weekend readership is dropping.
When I ask folks why they don't read a newspaper they say they don't have time, or the news is out of date by the time they get to the paper, or they'd rather not know what's going on.
Well, I'm trying to make a living here, folks, and this kind of thinking isn't helping.
TO THE people who don't want to know the news, all I can say is, please don't vote come election day. And to those who don't want a daily paper on their doorstep because it may contain views they disagree with: If you crave serenity, go live in a ashram.
On the other hand, I do sympathize with people who say they just don't have time for a daily newspaper. Anyone who lurches to work on a Dan or Egged bus could hardly be expected to read a paper as well, though heroically some try.
Still, organizing time is a matter of priorities. Previous generations didn't have the time-saving conveniences we enjoy; yet our parents and grandparents made time, not just for a morning paper, but often for an afternoon one as well.
True, news breaks between the time a paper goes to print and the time it's delivered to your door. Which is why the Web does serve a 'breaking news' function. It is also a great way to peruse out-of-town newspapers.
But neither radio, introduced in the 1920s, nor cable television news, which came on-stream in 1982 - or today's Wi-Fi Internet - can supplant newspapers. Because in an age of information overload, newspapers give you not only the 'who, what, where and when' but also the 'why-this-matters' context that is so necessary to be truly informed. By scanning the front page of a quality newspaper you also get a good sense about what's really important.
But why not read the newspaper for free - as most are - on the Web? Because people don't read articles on computer screens with the attention hard-copy newspapers demand and the comprehension they elicit.
The medium via which information is imparted influences how it will be comprehended. Reading a newspaper on the Web is like drinking skim milk. You can fool yourself into thinking you've had the real thing, but you haven't. And at many newspapers (though not this one), there's little connection between the Web site and the editorial side.
Moreover, the role of the media goes beyond reporting news to serving as a tool for political socialization. It is through the media that political values are inculcated. The media instruct citizens as to what events mean for them as individuals. And it is the media which seek to persuade, through editorials and coverage, what people should think.
For instance, the media in modern Germany promote zero-tolerance toward neo-Nazis - which some might call bias, but I call responsible journalism.
The question is, should we entrust such responsibilities to a bunch of geeks slapping the news on the Web at breakneck speed, or to journalists working under the checks and balances of seasoned editors? (The Post's Web site is actually run by the paper's editorial department.)
Enlightened readers know that newspapers provide the breadth and depth the electronic media alone can't duplicate. And advertisers know it too. The Newspaper Association of America reported that advertising expenditures for the fourth quarter of 2004 increased by 4.2% over the same period a year earlier. Savvy advertisers want to reach people who go beyond 'click and scroll.'
I'm not a Luddite. All I am saying is that when it comes to newspapers, technology can only take you so far. Perhaps the ideal way to read a paper that's not locally available is by subscribing to the page-by-page electronic facsimile.
Combining Wi-Fi and a facsimile allows you, at last, to take your digital newspaper into the toilet - just like the genuine article.
– From a March 7, 2005 Jerusalem Post column
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
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