What Ben Rhodes Doesn't Understand About Hope, Horizons & Palestinian Intentions

I heard Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy national security adviser, talking to Ilana Dayan on Army Radio Thursday morning, while I was driving to a meeting in the Tel Aviv area.

Rhodes is one of President Barack Obama's most loyal aides – Dayan (who is a top notch journalist and leans in the dovish direction) noted his longevity which is atypical -- most of the original White House crowd is long gone.

In addition to the customary bunch-of-words-strung-together you'd expect to hear from a professional wordsmith, Rhodes commented that one of the reasons the Palestinian Arabs had (again) turned to murderous violence is that there is no diplomatic solution on the horizon; there is a sense of hopelessness. If only there were a horizon of hope, he implied, this would not be happening.

That sounds reasonable. Only that it is wrong and shows how little he (and the administration he speaks for) understands Palestinian Arab sentiment.

Back on September 13, 1993, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords known as the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements. 

This was the apex of hope for Palestinians (and many Israelis). Here was something more than a diplomatic horizon. Here was a blueprint for the creation of Palestinian Arab interim self-government. In return, the PLO (supposedly) recognized Israel and (supposedly) committed to stop terrorism (i.e. anti-civilian warfare).

So, most reasonable folks would agree that September 13, 1993 might be a good starting point to gauge the correlation between "hope" or political horizon and Palestinian behavior.

What happened next?

Sep 24 93 - Yigal Vaknin was stabbed to death in an orchard near the trailer home where he lived near the village of Basra. A squad of the HAMAS's Iz a-Din al Kassam claimed responsibility for the attack.

Oct 9 93 Dror Forer and Aran Bachar were murdered by terrorists in Wadi Kelt in the Judean Desert. The Popular Front and the Islamic Jihad 'Al-Aqsa Squads' each publicly claimed responsibility.

Oct 24 93 Two IDF soldiers, Staff Sgt. (res.) Ehud Rot, age 35, and Sgt. Ilan Levi, age 23, were killed by a HAMAS Iz a-Din al Kassam squad. The two entered a Subaru with Israeli license plates outside a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, whose passengers were apparently terrorists disguised as Israelis. Following a brief struggle, the soldiers were shot at close range and killed. Hamas publicly claimed responsibility for the attack.

Oct 29 93 Chaim Mizrahi, resident of Beit-El, was kidnapped by three terrorists from a poultry farm near Ramallah. He was murdered and his body burned. Three Fatah members were convicted of the murder on July 27, 1994.

Nov 7 93 Efraim Ayubi of Kfar Darom, Rabbi Chaim Druckman's personal driver, was shot to death by terrorists near Hebron. HAMAS publicly claimed responsibility for the murder.

Nov 9 93 Salman 'Id el-Hawashla, age 38, an Israeli Bedouin of the Abu Rekaik tribe who was driving a car with Israeli plates, was killed by three armed men driving a truck hijacked from the Gaza municipality, in a deliberate head-on collision.

Nov 17 93 Sgt. 1st Cl. Chaim Darina, age 37, was stabbed by a Gazan terrorist while seated at the cafeteria at the Nahal Oz road block at the entrance to the Gaza Strip. The perpetrator was apprehended. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the murder.

Nov 24 93 Maurice (Moshe) Edri, age 65, was killed in a terrorist attack in Netanya

Dec 1 93 Shalva Ozana, age 23, and Yitzhak Weinstock, age 19, were shot to death by terrorists from a moving vehicle, while parked on the side of the road to Ramallah because of engine trouble. Weinstock died of his wounds the following morning. Iz a-Din al Kassam claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that it was carried out in retaliation for the killing by Israeli forces of Imad Akel, a wanted HAMAS leader in Gaza.

Dec 5 93 David Mashrati, a reserve soldier, was shot and killed by a terrorist attempting to board a bus on route 641 at the Holon junction. The Islamic Jihad Shekaki group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Dec 6 93 Mordechai Lapid and his son Shalom Lapid, age 19, were shot to death by terrorists near Hebron. HAMAS publicly claimed responsibility for the attack.

Dec 22 93 Eliahu Levin and Meir Mendelovitch were killed by shots fired at their car from a passing vehicle in the Ramallah area. HAMAS claimed responsibility.

Dec 23 93 Anatoly Kolisnikov, an Ashdod resident employed as a relief watchman at a construction site there, was stabbed to death while on duty.

Dec 24 93 Lieut.Col. Meir Mintz, commander of the IDF special forces in the Gaza area, was shot and killed by terrorists in an ambush on his jeep at the T-junction in Gaza. The HAMAS Iz a-Din al Kassam squads publicly claimed responsibility for the attack.

 Dec 31 93 Chaim Weizman and David Bizi were found murdered in a Ramle apartment. ID cards of two Gaza residents were found in the apartment, together with a leaflet of the Popular Front 'Red Eagle' group, claiming responsibility for the murder.

Jan 12 94 Moshe Becker of Rishon Le-Zion was stabbed to death by three Palestinian employees while working in his orchard. The Popular Front claimed responsibility for the murder.

Jan 14 94 Grigory Ivanov was stabbed to death by a terrorist in the industrial zone at the Erez junction, near the Gaza Strip. HAMAS claimed responsibility for the attack.

Feb 9 94 Ilan Sudri, a taxi driver, was kidnapped and murdered while returning home from work. The Islamic Jihad Shekaki group sent a message to the news agencies claiming responsibility for the murder.

Feb 9 94 Shai Shuker, aged 22 of Herzliya, was killed in a terrorist attack in Tira

Feb 10 94 Naftali Sahar, a citrus grower, was murdered by blows to his head. His body was found in his orchard near Kibbutz Na'an.

Feb 13 94 Noam Cohen, age 28, member of the General Security Service, was shot and killed in an ambush on his car. Two of his colleagues who were also in the vehicle suffered moderate injuries. HAMAS claimed responsibility for the attack.

Feb 17 94 Yuval Golan, stabbed on December 29, 1993 by a terrorist near Adarim in the Hebron area, died of his wounds.

Feb 19 94 Zipora Sasson, resident of Ariel and five months pregnant, was killed on the trans-Samaria highway in an ambush by shots fired at her car. The terrorists were members of HAMAS.

Feb 25 94 Sam Eisenstadt, age 80, was assaulted with an axe in the center of Kfar Saba. He died of his wounds shortly afterwards.

I want to interrupt this litany (it is only partial) to sadly acknowledge that on February 25, 1994 Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 unarmed Palestinian Arabs at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

Back to the Arabs. 

On Mar 23 94 Victor Lashchiver, employed as a guard at the Income Tax offices in east Jerusalem, was shot and killed near Damascus Gate on his way to work. The Popular Front claimed responsibility for the attack.

Mar 29 94 Yitzhak Rothenberg, age 70 of Petah Tikva, was attacked on a construction site by two residents of Khan Yunis by axe blows to the head. He died several days later of his wounds. The murderers, apprehended the next day, stated that they carried out the attack in order to clear themselves of suspected collaboration with the Israeli authorities.

Mar 31 94 Yosef Zandani, age 28 of Bnei Ayish, near Gedera, was found murdered in his apartment. Near the body was a leaflet of the DFLP "Red Star", explaining that the murder was carried out in revenge for the shooting of one of its members by an Israeli citizen. The Israeli acted in self-defense.

Apr 6 94 Asher Attia, 48, of Afula, bus driver; Vered Mordechai, 13, of Afula; Maya Elharar, 17, of Afula; Ilana Schreiber, 45, a teacher from Kibbutz Nir David; Meirav Ben-Moshe, 16, of Afula; Ayala Vahaba, 40, a teacher from Afula; and Fadiya Shalabi, 25, of Iksal were killed in a car-bomb attack on a bus in the center of Afula. HAMAS claimed responsibility for the attack. Ahuva Cohen Onalla, 37, wounded in the attack, died of her wounds on April 25.

Apr 7 94 Yishai Gadassi, age 32 of Kvutzat Yavne, was shot and killed at a hitchhiking post at the Ashdod junction by a member of HAMAS. The terrorist was killed by bystanders at the scene.

Apr 13 94 Rahamim Mazgauker, 34, of Hadera; David Moyal, 26 of Ramat Gan, an Egged mechanic; Daga Perda, 44, who immigrated from Ethiopia in 1991; Bilha Butin, 49, of Hadera; and Sgt. Ari Perlmutter, 19, of Ir Ovot in the Arava were killed in a suicide bombing attack on a bus in the central bus station of Hadera. HAMAS claimed responsibility for the attack.

So within the first six months or so of being offered an unprecedented political horizon the Palestinian Arabs barely took a break from their blood-lust.

Ben Rhodes might want to take a closer look at Palestinian intentions. If he did he'd understand that this issue isn't hope or horizons or the illusion of momentum the peace process offers Europeans and Americans. It isn't about settlements (there were no settlements between 1948 and 1967). It is "original sin" or as the Arabs call it the "nakba" -- the creation of Israel within any boundaries,

When Arafat proposed the phased destruction of Israel to his comrades and his polity -- they balked. Many would not even suspend the "struggle" because, what if, what it they stopped the killing and practiced coexistence and then lost their will to kill....the will to return to the "struggle" somewhere down the line once Israel pulled back to the 1949 Armistice Lines.

Simply put, the Palestinians are engaged in a zero sum struggle.

Until Ben Rhodes comprehends Palestinian intentions he will continue to offer well articulated banalities about finding horizons to end the "conflict."

He means well, no doubt. But it is our lives that are at stake.

PS. Please don't excuse the violence with the mantra that the extremists were trying to torpedo Oslo. You can't have it both ways: You can't credibly argue that when there is no hope some Palestinians turn to violence, but when there is hope other Palestinians turn to violence.  

After a Night of Knives - The "spontaneous" Uprising Accelerates

Some context.

The Zionist enterprise is engaged in a Long War against forces that oppose a Jewish presence in the land of Israel. Anywhere in the land of Israel.

In the course of the past 100 years the voice of Arab moderation has been stamped out. Extinguished, The Arab moderates are in the cemeteries – killed by their own people.

On some flimsy pretext that Jews visiting the Temple Mount has changed the "status quo" or that such visits pollute the Muslim holy place, Arab leaders have engaged in frothing-at-the-mouth incitement. 

I'm talking now about comparative Palestinian moderates such as the Arab caucus in the Israeli Knesset. And Mahmoud Abbas, the impotent, Hamlet-like Palestinian president-for-life.

Add in the blood-curdling Jew-hating official propaganda from Fatah and Hamas – promulgated in their media outlets (some EU-funded), and further disseminated by al Jazeera Arabic and the like, and the result is "spontaneous" lone-wolf attacks.

Once these lone-wolf and small group attacks – like the stabbings, "rite-of-passage" (as The New York Times explains them) rock throwing, & Molotov cocktail hurling – reach a tipping point, Fatah (al Aksa Martyrs), Hamas, and Islamic Jihad (among others) will seek to take charge of the now mobilized but temporarily directionless Palestinian violence.  

Thursday's despicable murder of the Henkin couple shows how the organizations have in fact already begun taking over the "spontaneous" uprising.

The Henkin family car. Oct. 1, 2015. (Hatzalah)

Yes, obviously, there are brainless sometimes unconscionable actions Jews have taken to add fuel to an explosive situation…ostentatious visits to the Temple Mount have undoubtedly fed into Arab fantasies and conspiratorial thinking. 

Truth be told, there are plenty of nut-case Templars itching to force the hand of God and thus giving a shred of credence to ranting Arab imams. The idea of uniting millions of Muslims at a time when they are fragmented doesn't bother the apocalyptic Templars because they (and only they) know God's will.

There is also the widely assumed culpability of Jews in the Duma attack which has understandably provoked Arab passions. Sadly, we know that Jews are capable of vile behavior. We know that most recently from the kidnapping and murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir in 2014.

That said, whatever our stupidities, hubris, and outright crimes, the overall picture would be more or less the same. Because our "original sin" is just being here.

In a Long War the mission is survival. The mission must define our strategy. And we need winning tactics day in and day out. 

So, for example, you don't repeatedly raise enemy morale. The current and previous prime ministers have released enemy prisoners with blood on their hands many of whom return to their old lifestyles. We've done so to "help Abu Mazen" to bring Gilad Shalit home or to retrieve the corpses of fallen IDF soldiers.

This sends a signal that we are weak, indecisive, soft. That time is on the enemy's side.

Of course, this is just one example of failed tactics.

What to expect.

First, the Obama administration will offer a new "peace plan" – encouraged by the Saudis and the Europeans. Like all previous plans since 1967 this one will be aimed at pushing us back to the 1949 Armistice Lines (more or less). For the Saudis, Abbas, and moderate Arabs that's a good beginning in the phased destruction of Israel.

Secondly, we will be told that we have "a right to defend ourselves" – at the theoretical level. Just don't try to exercise that right in practice. Therefore, utilitarian, clever, and effective actions we take to enhance our security – especially in Judea and Samaria and metropolitan Jerusalem – will be condemned as disproportionate, labelled collective punishment, Apartheid, and a war crime. 

Thirdly, our leaders will continue to bicker. Don't expect a national unity government. Not only is there no loyal opposition (Herzog and Lapid and Leiberman) but there is no loyal coalition (Bennett and Shaked and Ariel).

Fourth, we will remain rudderless at the top. We have a smooth-talking Wizard who manages on good days to keep most of the balls in the air… maybe, given the dysfunctional political system he helps to perpetuate, that's about as much as we can expect. 

Around us...

On any given day in the greater Middle East, Muslims slaughter Muslims by the tens and by the hundreds. They bomb each other's mosques and shrines. The intra-Arab and intra-Muslim butchery in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, North Africa, Sudan, and Yemen – will never draw as much action from the UN and EU as, say, Israel temporarily closing a single road to Arab traffic to stop drive-by shootings.

We will hear that if only there were no "settlers" or "settlements" the entire Middle East would be bucolic – with Sunni lying down with Shiite, lambs with lions, Persians with Turks, Alawites with Salafis and Kurds with Arabs. 

And Muslims would practice war no more. 

If only the Jews, ahem, "settlers" would go away.

   

     

The State of Israel in Numbers

In case, in the holiday rush, you missed these 5776 Jewish New Year tidbits, here we go. They're from the Sept 11, 2015 Haaretz (Hebrew).

1.      Israel’s Population Hits 8.4 Million on Eve of Jewish New Year

2.      Of these 6,300,000 are Jewish

3.      28,000 people immigrated to Israel (nine percent from the United States)

4.      70 percent of Jewish Israelis believe in God – obviously including the majority non-Orthodox population

5.      63 percent want public transportation on Shabbat

6.      55 percent want civil marriage

7.      In terms of happiness, 59 percent of secular Israelis, 64 percent of traditional Israelis, 74 percent of Orthodox Israelis and 78 percent of ultra-Orthodox Israelis say they are happy.

8.      51 percent of Israeli Jews eat kosher exclusively.

9.      42 percent support single-sex marriage

10.   28 percent prefer SMS to using the telephone

11.   Only 47 percent of Israelis are happy with their jobs

12.   59 percent prefer home cooking to restaurant eating

13.   14 percent said they're thinking about emigrating

14.   27 percent have been in therapy- 3 percent are currently in therapy

15.   32 percent prefer spending time on the Internet against 18 percent who prefer TV

16.   34 percent told surveyors they are "right now" reading a book

17.   About seven percent of Jews are vegetarian  (3 percent vegan)

18.   82 percent self-define as "Zionist"

19.   42 percent say they have sex at least once a week

Where do you get yours News & Views?

Nowadays, I read my news-and-views mostly online. I still get a print newspaper delivered to my door every morning – Haaretz in Hebrew (don't read too much into that!) but like you, I get most of my news-and-views from social media, Internet viewspapers, and by visiting favorite websites.

Beyond Israel, I find myself drawn (sometimes like a moth to flame) to Facebook, Twitter, The NYT, WP, C-SPAN, PBS Newshour, Politico, Roll Call, Real Clear Politics PEW, Drudge, gosh…I could go on and on.

I'm always interested in discovering genuinely fresh sources of "content" especially since so much of what we read is regurgitated, curated, and aggregated.

In brainstorming about how I could promote my book The Pater, my publicist suggested I check out Kveller. If nothing else, I tripped upon a great site.

It is, editor Molly Tolsky tells me in an email, a website for women and parents who are raising kids through a Jewish lens and looking to share, celebrate, and commiserate with like-minded people. The site goes after readers from all different levels of observance and experience, from "first-time parents, grandparents, interfaith parents, queer parents, adoptive parents, and everything in between."

Kveller averages over 1 million unique page views a month, she says.

People turn to Kveller for its personal essays. "Our writers are relentlessly honest and unafraid to take on any topic, whether light-hearted or taboo, as it relates to parenting, relationships, careers, and so on," Tolsky says.

"We also feature an extensive Jewish Baby Name finder, how-to guides for Jewish holidays and life-cycle rituals, recipes, an advice column called 'Dear Gefilte,' and exclusive blog posts from Emmy-nominated Jewish actress and writer, Mayim Bialik, who stars on CBS' The Big Bang Theory."

Kveller is named after the Yiddish word, meaning to burst with pride (as over one's child... get it?), she prompts.

Kveller is part of 70 Faces Media, a not-for-profit group which also runs the JTA.

II

I'M FOREVER asking people where they turn for news-and-views.

When I posed this question to Shimon Fogel, chief executive officer of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Canada he wrote back:

"Elliot, there is no shortage of excellent sites from which to glean important and insightful information flowing from specifically Jewish perspectives. While my personal reading is not, of course, limited to Jewish-specific sites, the ones that I review on a regular basis include:

Commentary and Tablet magazines – both of which provide very timely insights, albeit from different perspectives (the former being more conservative and the latter more liberal). In addition, Mosaic provides an excellent daily digest that I find very useful and the Gatestone Institute has been producing some very strong and useful articles and analysis that I have found very helpful."

British scholar Colin Shindler, emeritus professor at the University of London and author of the just published The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron  tells me that he is "a great fan of Harry’s Place http://hurryupharry.org/ which focuses on the attitudes of the British and international Left towards Israel and Zionism.

"It provides factual information which is often omitted elsewhere. I also enjoy reading Jeffrey Goldberg’s website for his humour and analysis of issues concerning the Jewish world. I appreciate Roger Cohen’s insight, erudition and command of the English language in all his writings."

Sally Berkovic, chief executive at the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) in Europe is a voracious consumer of news and views particularly as it relates to her work. 

She rattled off a bunch of sites, some of which I'd never heard including of http://www.guidestar.org/ which is a repository of nearly 10,000 entries about Jewish charities in the USA and its Israeli counterpart - http://www.guidestar.org.il/

She says www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu is an excellent overview of the issues, events and challenges dealing with Jewish heritage;

http://web.nli.org.il/sites/nli/English/Pages/default.aspx is the site of one of the most important institutions in Jewish and Israeli life that holds our national memory and heritage;  http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/ has relevant updates in Jewish philanthropy and reflective articles by leading practitioners in the field; http://archives.jdc.org/?referrer=https://www.google.co.uk/ provides a treasure trove of important documents chronicling 100 years of helping Jews across the world and http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/ offers access to thousands of images and documents reflecting Jewish life in Europe.

Shimon Cohen who runs the well-regarded THE PR OFFICEin London says he makes it a point to read Tablet, Forward and Jewish Journal. "I read as much and as many as I can find and I have found these to be extensive and authoritative. Then there's Failed Messiah which is to Jews what Fox News is to the rest of the world." 

So I asked Shmarya Rosenberg of FailedMessiah to tell me about his site. 

During the "quiet summer time" he draws 200,000 visitors and about 1 million page views.

"I report on crime, corruption and bad behavior, primarily in the haredi and Modern Orthodox/Zionist Orthodox communities, but also on religion and state issues in Israel. I do it primarily to expose the internal cover-ups related to these crimes and to provide some measure of protection and support for victims by doing so. As Justice Louis Brandies said, sunshine is said to the best disinfectant."

III

OVER AT http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/ Rationalist Judaism, Natan Slifkin tells me a bit about his site: It is primarily for people with a strong yeshiva education, a strong secular education, and disturbed by much of what is taught in the Orthodox world.


The site is mostly a labor of love though sometimes he receives donations in response to offering monographs for download.
According to Slifkin: "It started primarily as an exploration of the rationalist approach to Judaism and how it differs from the mystical approach. This relates to everything from Torah/science issues to the size of a kezayis to the alleged merits of segulos to the role of Torah study. In the last few years I have also written a lot about haredi vs. non-haredi society, especially in Israel. This also relates to the non-rationalist divide, as I discuss on the site. So the site is an
unusual combination of scholarly writing and social commentary.

Sometimes these are intertwined. For example, when it comes to the issue of army service, there is a haredi claim that their Torah study protects. Many people disagree with this, but they don't actually debate its merits from a Torah perspective. On my website, I carefully analyzed this argument from several perspectives, including that of basis in traditional sources."

Slifkin used to be very much part of haredi and still lives in a generally haredi community. "This means that issues relating to haredim are very important to me, and it also means that I have an insider's perspective on their worldview, and are thus better qualified to critically evaluate it."

IV

LEAVE A COMMENT and let me know your favorite sources and sites – the more obscure or esoteric the better!

And thank you (loyal reader) for checking in on my blog over the past year.

Wishing us all a year of health, creativity and peace (with security…of course!). 

 : - )

Elliot

Pact With the Devil?

To find sanctuary and profit in the new world, Jews sometimes played a prominent role in the machinery of slavery, I learned from scholar Jonathan Schorsch

One-hundred and fifty years after the U.S. Civil War, slavery's ramifications continue to torment the American psyche. Nearly six in 10 Americans think race relations are bad, and four in 10 feel they are getting worse, according to a recent New York Times poll.

In June, a white supremacist murdered nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. And in July, yet another African-American, Sandra Bland, wound up dead under suspicious circumstances after being arrested by a white police in Waller County, Texas.

American Jews would like to think they have only an incidental share in their country's sullied legacy of slavery and racism. But both white supremacists and black chauvinists insist Jews were central to the equation.

Jonathan Schorsch has devoted much of his academic career to understanding the relationship between Jews and blacks in the New World. Schorsch, the son of former Jewish Theological Seminary chancellor Ismar Schorsch, was drawn to the subject in the early 1990s, after learning of the accusations from Black nationalists, such as Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, that Jews were responsible not only for the slave trade but for having embedded the very idea of racism into Scripture.

Yet Schorsch was no less exasperated with the knee-jerk Jewish reaction to Farrakhan. Jewish leaders in the 1980s and 1990s turned the discussion to the vanguard role the community played in the civil rights movement.

Jonathan Schorsch

The history, it turned out, was far from black and white.

SLAVERY WAS ubiquitous in the New World starting in the 1500s until well into the mid-1800s. Schorsch set out to establish the facts— painful as they might be in contemporary eyes— about Jewish-Black relations in the age of slavery.

In 2004, he wrote Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World which concluded that Jewish attitudes toward blacks, between the 1600s and 1800s, were on the whole not much different from the European colonial norm.

In 2009, he came out with Swimming the Christian Atlantic: Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century . The book, aimed at an academic audience, examined the extent to which the Catholic Church in the 1600s distrusted and discriminated against both Jewish and African converts to Christianity.

His latest essay on Jews in the Caribbean appears in a just-released collection of http://www.walburgpers.nl/winkel/algemeen/joden essays— for now available only in Dutch— published in conjunction with the Jewish Historical Museum of Amsterdam's current exhibit on Jewish life in the Caribbean.

IN JUNE, I heard Schorsch speak at the historic Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam about how Jews in the Dutch Caribbean reconciled halacha and slavery. Many in the audience were non-Jewish descendants of former slaves.

Jews from Spain and Portugal— but also from Ashkenazi lands— began to live openly in Amsterdam starting in the early 1600s after the Netherlands became Protestant. Schorsch explained that slavery in Europe during the 1600s was mostly of the domestic variety. Slaves in Jewish households were often incorporated into the family. Males were circumcised. Women went to the mikve. Otherwise, they couldn't work in the home preparing kosher food or serving wine. 

Meantime, Jews arrived in the Caribbean in the 1600s settling in Suriname, Curaçao, northeast Brazil, and New Amsterdam – all Dutch colonies dominated until 1730 by the quasi-governmental Dutch West India Company. The Dutch were happy to have white Jewish slave owners settler in the Caribbean.

But the slavery of the New World was a far cry from the domestic variety that had offered a prospect of assimilation back in Europe. Caribbean slavery was plantation-based aimed at stoking colonial economies – at a dreadful cost to African lives and dignity.

The Jewish communities of the Caribbean enjoyed sweeping religious and economic freedom not generally available in the Old World. And Jews followed the prevailing Christian and Muslim mores in their treatment of slaves – not Jewish law. The massive plantation system blocked opportunities for assimilation into the master's household previously available.

Schorsch came to conclude that the Jewish minority was no less involved in benefiting from the institution of slavery than the larger Christian society. In the 17th and 18th century, Jews owned perhaps 40,000 slaves in the Dutch Caribbean most of whom were not given the option of conversion and assimilation into the Jewish community.

I caught up with Schorsch after he returned to his academic base at Potsdam University in Germany.

What would halacha have demanded of Jewish slave owners?

That slaves be allowed to rest on Shabbat. Halacha on other matters was not monolithic. The most stringent, but until the 16th century the most widespread halachic understanding was that male slaves would be circumcised at purchase or within the first year, and that female slaves be immersed in the mikve. It was also forbidden to approach a slave sexually. 

How learned were the Dutch Jews who reached the Caribbean in the 1600s of Jewish tradition?

Scholars continue to debate the Jewishness of the Converso or New Christian population. The consensus has it that the Portuguese Conversos were far more loyal to and fervent regarding maintaining Jewish beliefs and practices than the Spanish Conversos. 

I think the best way to understand the Jewishness of Conversos is to see the population as being divided into four types: (1) those secretly loyal to Judaism – Marranos; (2) sincere converts to Catholicism and those who for pragmatic reasons dropped interest in Judaism; (3) those practicing a syncretic religion combining Judaism and Christianity; (4) those disgusted by religious coercion and violence; skeptics, free-thinkers.

Because Judaism was forbidden in Iberian territories, a prohibition enforced by the Inquisitions, secrecy and dissembling epitomize this whole phenomenon, making it simply impossible to quantify the size of each of these four types.

So even Conversos loyal to Judaism tended to know little about actual living Judaism. 

With some exceptions they had no input from contemporary Jews or Jewish texts. Hence the increasingly tenuous connection between crypto-Judaism and real Judaism.

Many Conversos who fled to lands where one could be a Jew openly did so not out of a desire to be Jewish but merely to flee the terror of the Inquisition. 

Raised as Catholics, these “New Jews,” in historian Yosef Kaplan’s phrasing, were mostly ignorant of rabbinic law and many even saw it rather negatively, as did the Church.

Jews appear to have played a comparatively minor role in importing African slaves to the New World. Right?

As slavery became industrialized by the Portuguese and Spanish in the late 15th century, some Converso or New Christian merchants played a prominent role as slave traders. This lasted perhaps into the 17th century. 

One question remains the religious loyalties of these men, but we should not preclude the likelihood that some were Marranos, i.e., loyal Jews.

In terms of open Jews, the number of slave traders, even part-time, known to scholars from the four-century history of the Atlantic slave trade probably does not exceed 30. This is an astonishingly low number and the reason for the paucity of Jewish slave traders continues to be unclear. 

Did ethics keep Jews out of this business?  Lack of connections?  The most well-known (or notorious) might be Aaron Lopez of Newport, Rhode Island.

Jews in various colonies often played a role, sometimes a prominent one, in buying up slaves at slave markets in the Americas and selling them in the interior of the colonies to planters.

Were there differences in how Jews related to the slave economy among Caribbean colonies controlled by the Netherlands versus those dominated by France or Britain?

French colonies did not generally tolerate a Jewish presence, but where they did, as in Saint Domingue (later Haiti), some Jews entered the planter elite, just as in Suriname, a Dutch colony, and Barbados and Jamaica, English colonies.

But in all of the colonies, Jewish merchants benefitted from slave labor, as did almost any family that wasn’t poor and could afford one or two slaves to help with the arduous and endless work necessary for running their domestic economy.

Were there Jews who protested the slave system?

Beginning in the 18th century, some European Jewish influenced by the enlightenment became critics of slavery. Some Jews became active in the abolitionist movement of the 19th century, which really thrived only in the English colonial orbit, but they represented a small minority of the Jewish population and their radical stance often went unappreciated by the larger community, to put it mildly.

Turning to domestic slaves. How did the Caribbean Jewish community relate to these Jews of color?

Those few slaves who were converted, either according to Halacha or by taking on Jewishness through sexual/romantic relations with Jewish masters were usually initially welcomed in the small, vulnerable communities around the Atlantic. They were treated as full Jews, as was the standard way in the so-called Old World before the rise of industrial slavery.

They married within the community, the men were given honors in synagogue. But quickly in each community a backlash ensued. In Amsterdam, Suriname and Curaçao the governing elites instituted legislation against non-whites, for example banning non-whites from burial in the regular part of the cemeteries, banning their circumcision, immersion or conversion, removing the option of calling the men to the Torah or studying in the yeshiva at Amsterdam, prohibiting non-white women from sitting in the front rows of the women’s section in synagogue. 

While Halacha is hardly always “progressive,” we see how under the Atlantic slave system race came to take precedence over Halacha in many Atlantic-world Jewish communities.

If Jews were not prominent players in the trans-Atlantic slave trade or instrumental in financing for the slave trade why have Jews been persistently singled out by Black militants for opprobrium?

I think the animosity stems from two factors. The first is the turn of early 20th-century American Black activists and radicals from their elders’ Christianity. "White” Christianity now faced harsh critique from them and so did Judaism, the source of Christianity and a partner in the alleged Judeo-Christian civilization that American thinkers loved to parade around.

The second factor is later 20th-century socio-economic tensions. In the Civil Rights era many Blacks negatively compared their own situation to that of Jews. They came to see Jews as succeeding because they could pass as white and surmised, not without reason, that some of that success was gained at their expense.

There could not have been a slave trade without Africans in Africa prepared to sell other Africans to European and Muslim buyers. Yet you seem to feel that this is besides the point.

African slavery prior to the era of European conquest and colonization— taking losing warriors in inter-tribal conflicts or raiding rival villages for slaves— was mostly domestic, an equal-opportunity matter, and lacked the intense racism that European enslavement of Africans developed and required. This is not to excuse such slavery.

Once Europeans arrived in Africa, however, they took slaves in increasingly high numbers in order to provide labor for their profit-making agricultural colonies and intentionally instigated inter-tribal wars in order to obtain more slaves.

The slaves themselves were now treated miserably, like non-humans, and since almost every slave came from Black Africa – an entire, vicious system of exclusion, ostracization, and dehumanization was erected.

And what about the Muslim/Arab slave trade?

Often inquiries into these topics have as much to do with current ideological drives than with some supposedly neutral facts. People want to know whom to blame, whom to absolve. So, frequently such questions are rhetorical as much as purely informational.

If Africans participated in slavery then whites aren’t so terrible, some whites might say. If most of the slave trade and economy was run by white Christians, the Jews who were involved were just doing what everyone else was doing. 

I find this a highly unsatisfying, even a suspect way of avoiding responsibility.

Nonetheless, can you assess the role of Arabs in the transport of African slaves to the new world.

I have never heard of Arabs involved in transferring slaves to the Americas.  They were rather busy with their own extensive slave system, which differed significantly in some respects from Atlantic-world slavery.

--------

Elliot Jager is a Jerusalem-based journalist. His book Pater: My Father, My Judaism, My Childlessness will be published by The Toby Press in October.