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| caption = | caption =
| birth_name = Israel Himmelstaub | birth_name = Israel Himmelstaub
| birth_date = 29 April 1933 | birth_date = {{Birth date|1933|04|28}}
| birth_place = Warsaw, Poland | birth_place = ], ]
| death_date = 2 July 2001 | death_date = {{Death date and age|2001|06|02|1933|04|28}}
| death_place = Jerusalem, Israel | death_place = ]
| nationality = | nationality =
| other_names = | other_names =
| occupation = Professor of chemistry, political scientist, civil rights activist, author | occupation = Professor, political thinker, author, and civil rights activist
| known_for = | known_for =
| signature = Israel Shahak signature.png | signature = Israel Shahak signature.png
}} }}
'''Israel Shahak''' ({{lang-he|ישראל שחק}}; B. '''Israel Himmelstaub''', 28 April 1933 – 2 July 2001) was an Israeli professor of chemistry, at ], a ] survivor, a public intellectual of Liberal bent, and a civil rights activist in behalf of Jew and gentile. From 1970 to 1990, he headed the ], and was a public critic of the policies of the Israeli government. As a public intellectual, Shahak’s works about ] proved controversial, especially the book ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'' (1994).<ref name=JQuarterly>Warschawski (2001).</ref> '''Israel Shahak''' ({{lang-he|ישראל שחק}}; born Himmelstaub, April 28, 1933 &ndash; July 2, 2001) was a Polish ] survivor and Israeli professor of ] at the ], known especially as a liberal<ref name=JQuarterly>Warschawski (2001).</ref> secular political thinker, author, and civil rights activist. Between 1970 and 1990, he was president of the ] and was an outspoken critic of the Israeli government. Shahak's writings on ] have been a source of widespread controversy.


==Biography== ==Biography==
'''Israel Shahak''' was born Israel Himmelstaub in 1933, in Warsaw, Poland, as the youngest child of a cultured, Zionist family of ]s.<ref>Adams (2001). "Born in 1933 into a cultured Jewish family in Warsaw,".</ref><ref>, ''The New York Review of Books'', Volume 34, Number 1, 29 January 1987. Quote from Shahak: "I was born in Warsaw and was in the Warsaw Ghetto almost till the end;"</ref> During the Nazi ], the Shahak family were interned to the ]; his elder brother escaped to Britain, where he joined the ]. Meanwhile, in occupied Poland, Shahak's mother paid a Roman Catholic family to hide Israel, whom they later returned when she was unable to continue paying for his safe-keeping from the Nazis. Born in ], ],<ref>, '']'', Volume 34, Number 1, January 29, 1987. Quote from Shahak: "I was born in Warsaw (the subject of a large part of the essay) and was in the Warsaw Ghetto almost till the end;"</ref> Shahak was the youngest child of a cultured, religious, pro-Zionist, ]ish family.<ref>Adams (2001). "Born in 1933 into a cultured Jewish family in Warsaw,".</ref> During ], his family was forced into the ]. His brother escaped and joined the ]. His mother paid a poor ] family to hide him, but when her money ran out he was returned. In 1943 he and his family were sent to the ] concentration camp, near Lublin, where his father died. Israel and his mother managed to escape and returned to Warsaw, but within the year, they were both sent to ]. Shahak was liberated from the camp in 1945, and shortly thereafter emigrated to the ], where he wanted to join a ], but was turned down as "too weedy".<ref>Pallis (2001). "After setbacks - he was rejected as 'too weedy' when he volunteered for a kibbutz - he became a model citizen."</ref>


⚫ From age 12, Shahak cared for and provided economic support for his mother who survived the Nazi camp in very poor physical condition. After a period of learning in a religious boarding school in ], he moved with his mother to ]. After graduating from high school, Shahak served in the ] (IDF) in an elite regiment.<ref name=Pallis>Pallis (2001).</ref> After completing service with the IDF, he attended ] where he received his ] in ]. He became an assistant to ], the chair of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission.<ref name=Independent>Adams (2001).</ref>
In 1943, when Israel was a ten-year-old boy, the Nazis sent the Shahak family to the ], to the west of Lublin, where his father died. Israel and his mother escaped the Poniatowa concentration camp, and returned to Warsaw. yet, within a year, the Nazis had recaptured and imprisoned them to the ]. In 1945, the British Army liberated the prisoners of Bergen-Belsen; as ] Israel and his mother managed to emigrate to the ], where his application to join a ] was denied, because he was physically too-slender.<ref>Pallis (2001). “After setbacks — he was rejected as 'too weedy' when he volunteered for a kibbutz — he became a model citizen.”</ref>


In 1961, Shahak left Israel for the ] to study as a postdoctoral student at ]. He returned two years later to become a popular teacher and researcher in chemistry at Hebrew University, and also became politically active.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> He published many scientific papers, mostly on organic ] compounds<ref>Science Citation Index</ref> and contributed to cancer research. He remained at Hebrew University until he retired in 1990 because of concerns about his ] and desire to do other work.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001>Mezvinsky (2001), p. 11.</ref>
⚫ From the age of twelve years, the boy Israel cared for and supported his sickly mother; surviving the Bergen-Belsen Nazi camp broke her health. After attending a religious boarding school in the village of ], Israel and his mother moved to ]. Upon graduation from secondary school, Shahak soldiered in the ] (IDF).<ref name=Pallis>Pallis (2001).</ref> After military service, Shaka earned a ] in chemistry, at ]. In the course of his professional career, the scientist Israel Shahak was an assistant to the nuclear physicist ], the chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).<ref name=Independent>Adams (2001).</ref>


For most of his adult life, Shahak lived in the ] neighborhood of ]. He died in ] at age 68 due to complications from ] and was buried in the Givat Shaul cemetery.<ref name=Pallis/>
In 1961, Shahak pursued post-doctoral studies at ] in the U.S., and, in 1963, returned to Israel, where he became a popular ] and researcher in chemistry, at Hebrew University; and, by 1965, he also had become active in the Israeli politics of the day.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> As a chemist, Shahak’s work produced science about organic compounds of ], and contributed to cancer research.<ref>Science Citation Index</ref> In 1990, Shahak retired from the faculty of Hebrew University, because of poor health (]) and the pursuit of intellectual research work in other fields.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001>Mezvinsky (2001), p. 11.</ref> For most of his adult life, Prof. Israel Shahak, Ph.D., resided in the ] neighborhood of ]; he died at age 68, of diabetic complications, and was buried in the Givat Shaul cemetery.<ref name=Pallis/>


==Politics== ==Politics and works==
Shahak first became concerned about Israel’s direction because of ]'s statement during the 1956 ] that Israel was fighting for "the kingdom of David and Solomon."<ref name=Hitchens/>
;Public intellectual
⚫ In the 1960s he became involved in the ].<ref name=JQuarterly/> In 1965, he began his political activism against “classical Judaism” and Zionism.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> That year he wrote a controversial letter to '']'' alleging he had witnessed an Orthodox Jew “refusing to let his phone be used on the Sabbath to help a non-Jew who had collapsed nearby,” beginning a still continuing debate on ] attitudes towards non-Jews.<ref name=Rickman>Rickman (2009).</ref>
In the late 1950s, as a citizen of Israel, Prof. Shahak became politically engaged in response to the imperialist comment of ] that, with the ] (29 October 1956 – 7 November 1956), the State of Israel was fighting to achieve “the kingdom of David and Solomon”.<ref name=Hitchens/>
⚫ In the 1960s he joined the Israeli League Against Religious Coercion.<ref name=JQuarterly/> In 1965, he began political activism against “Classical Judaism” and Zionism;<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> and wrote a letter to the '']'' newspaper about having witnessed an Orthodox Jew “refusing to let his phone be used on the Sabbath to help a non-Jew who had collapsed nearby”; in Israel, Shahk's letter-to-the-editor complaint began a continual debate about the attitudes (religious and cultural) of ] towards gentiles.<ref name=Rickman>Rickman (2009).</ref>


In 1967, after the ] (5–10 June 1967), Shahak ended his membership to the League Against Religious Coercion, because they were “fake liberals” who used the principles of ] to combat coercive religious influence in Israeli society — but did not apply such protections to the Israeli Palestinians living in the IDF-occupied ] and in the ].<ref name=JQuarterly/> In the event, Shahak joined the ], and became its president in 1970.<ref name=Independent/> The League for Human and Civil Rights, composed of Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, protested and publicized Israel's restrictive policies against Palestinians, and provided legal aid to them. Following the 1967 ], Shahak disavowed his affiliation with the League Against Religious Coercion, stating they were "fake liberals" who used liberal principles to fight religious influence in Israeli society, but failed to apply them to Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the ] and ].<ref name=JQuarterly/> Shahak then became active with the ] and was elected its president in 1970. He remained a “moving spirit” of the organization for many years.<ref name=Independent/> The League for Human and Civil Rights, composed of Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, protested and publicized Israeli policies towards Palestinians and provided some legal and other aid to them. In 1969 Shahak and another Hebrew University faculty member staged a sit-down protest against the Israeli government jailing Palestinian students under emergency ] regulations. In the following years, he supported Palestinian students' efforts to achieve equal rights at Hebrew University.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> In 1970 he established the ].<ref name=JQuarterly/>


Shahak began publishing translations into English of Hebrew press accounts of Israeli activities he considered unjust or illegal, in order to publicize them to the wider world,<ref name=Independent/> and especially the United States.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> He sent his reports to journalists, academics and human rights campaigners, drawing attention with titles like “Torture in Israel,” and “Collective Punishment in the West Bank.”<ref name=Rickman/> During the 1970s and ensuing decades he went on a number of speaking tours to universities, churches and other institutions in the United States and met privately with members of Congress and officials of the State Department. He became a well-known activist in international circles, co-authoring papers and giving joint speaking engagements with American ] ], and winning plaudits from ], ], ] and ].
In 1969, Shahak and another member of the faculty of Hebrew University, realised a sit-down protest against the Israeli government's policy of jailing polically active Palestinian students, by way of ] authorised by state-of-emergency laws; likewise, Shahak supported the political efforts of the Palestinian students to achieve equal rights, like those granted to Jewish Israelis, at Hebrew University.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> In 1970, Shahak established the Committee Against Administrative Detentions to formally oppose such legalised political repression.<ref name=JQuarterly/>


Topics on which Shahak wrote included suppression of freedom of speech and political activity, land ordinances and confiscation, living restrictions, home destruction, unequal pay and work restrictions, emergency defense regulations, torture of prisoners, collective punishment, assassinations, discrimination in education and deprivation of citizenship.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> These activities earned Shahak great hostility in Israel and he even received death threats. After the ] he also wrote of Israeli abuses in Lebanon.<ref name=Independent/> Shahak promoted the theory that Israel's religious interpretation of Jewish history led it to disregard Arab human rights.<ref name=Rickman/> He also began to argue that Zionism was a "regime based on structural discrimination and racism." Reviewer ] explains that for Shahak, Zionism was both a reflection of, and capitulation to, European antisemitism, "since it, like the anti-Semites, holds that Jews are everywhere aliens who would best be isolated from the rest of the world."<ref name=Richman>Richman (1989).</ref> In 1994 he published ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'', in 1997 he published ''Open Secrets: Israel's Nuclear and Foreign Policies'', and in 1994 he published ''Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel'', co-authored with ]. In the introduction to the 2004 version of the book, Mezvinsky wrote that "We realize that by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others."<ref>Shahak, Mezvinsky (2004), p. xxi.</ref>
To make public the anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian legalised discrimination, Shahak published English translations of Hebrew-language reportage about illegal and unjust actions of the Israeli government against the gentile citizens of Israel; Shahak's English reports were principally for the Jewish community of the U.S.<ref name=Independent/><ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> The translated reports featured headlines such as “Torture in Israel,” and “Collective Punishment in the West Bank”, which Shahak sent to journalists, academics, and human rights activists, and so ensure that the mainstream population of the U.S. would be informed of the religious discrimination practised by the government of Israel.<ref name=Rickman/>


⚫ In his last years, Shahak criticized hypocrisy in the Palestinian national movement, and the radical left for its uncritical support of the movement, publishing letters in ''Ha'aretz'' and '']''.<ref name=JQuarterly/> In an obituary published in ], ] wrote that Shahak's home was "a library of information about the human rights of the oppressed", and that <blockquote>The families of prisoners, the staff of closed and censored publications, the victims of eviction and confiscation--none were ever turned away. I have met influential "civil society" Palestinians alive today who were protected as students when Israel was a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University; from him they learned never to generalize about Jews. And they respected him not just for his consistent stand against discrimination but also because--he never condescended to them. He detested nationalism and religion and made no secret of his contempt for the grasping Arafat entourage. But, as he once put it to me, "I will now only meet with Palestinian spokesmen when we are out of the country. I have some severe criticisms to present to them. But I cannot do this while they are living under occupation and I can 'visit' them as a privileged citizen."<ref name=Hitchens>Hitchens (2001).</ref></blockquote>
;Civil rights advocate
As a ], Shahak wrote about the Israeli government's actions against the non-Jewish citizens of the State of Israel, such as the suppression of freedom of speech and general political activity; land ordinances and the confiscation of lands from the gentiles; living restrictions upon non-Jews (ghettoes); the destruction of houses; legally-sanctioned unequal pay and work restrictions; emergency-defence regulations allowing the summary arrest, detention, and torture of prisoners (civil and military); the collective punishment of communities; the assassinations of leaders (religious, political, academic); racial discrimination in access to education; and the deprivation of Israeli citizenship.<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> Such political activities earned Shahak much hostility and death threats; after the ] (June 1982 – June 1985), Shahak also reported Israeli abuses of the populations of Lebanon.<ref name=Independent/>


⚫ ==Alleged telephone incident==
In effort to explain the behaviour of the State of Israel towards their Arab neighbours, Prof. Shahak proposed that the Israeli interpretation of Jewish history produced a society who disregard the human rights of the Arab peoples, within Israel and around Israel.<ref name=Rickman/> That Zionism was a “régime based on structural discrimination and racism.” In the book review of ''Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections'' (1988), Sheldon Richman countered Shahak's description of Judaism, by personally characterising Shahak as a Jew for whom Zionism was a reflection of, and a capitulation to, European anti-Semitism, “since it , like the anti-Semites, holds that Jews are everywhere aliens who would best be isolated from the rest of the world.”<ref>Richman, Sheldon L. “Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections”. Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo, and Norton Mezvinsky, eds. Amana Books, Brattleboro, Vermont, 1988; Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, June, 1989. </ref>
⚫ In 1965, Shahak wrote a letter to '']'' which, according to Dan Rickman, writing in '']'' in 2009, was the genesis for "he currently major debate within and outside Israel about Orthodox Jewish attitudes to non-Jews".<ref name=Rickman/> In this letter Shahak wrote he had witnessed an Orthodox Jewish man refusing to allow his telephone to be used to call an ambulance for a non-Jew because it was the Jewish ].<ref name=Rickman/><ref name=Segev>], ''1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East'', ], 2007, , ISBN 1429911670, 9781429911672 .</ref><ref>Bogdanor (2006), .</ref><ref name=Boteach>Boteach (2008).</ref> He also wrote that members of the ] confirmed that the man was correct in his understanding of ], and that they backed this assertion by quoting from a passage from a recent compilation of law. The issue was subsequently taken up in Israeli newspapers and '']'', leading to significant publicity.<ref name=Rickman/><ref name=Segev/><ref name=Boteach/> According to Israeli historian ], '']'' asked for the opinion of the minister of religious affairs, Dr. ], who did not refute the rabbinical ruling, but quoted from traditional Jewish sources according to which Jewish doctors had saved the lives of non-Jews on the Sabbath, although they were not required to do so."<ref name=Segev/>


⚫ In 1966, ], who later became ] of the United Hebrew Congregations of ] and the ],<ref>, '']'', November 1, 1999.</ref> disputed the veracity of Shahak's story. Jakobovits alleged that Shahak eventually had been forced to admit that the Orthodox Jew he wrote he had witnessed, in Jakobovits words, "simply did not exist." Jakobovits wrote that "The whole incident had been fabricated in true '']'' style".<ref>]. , ''Tradition'', Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966.</ref> He cited a lengthy '']'' by ], the ] ] of Israel at the time, who stated that, "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives," citing a ruling by ] that Jews ''should'' desecrate the Sabbath to save a gentile’s life.<ref name=Rickman/><ref name=Boteach/><ref name=Schwartz>Schwartz (2002), .</ref><ref name=Tradition59>Jakobovits (1966), p. 59.</ref> ] in his ''Noda B’Yehuda'' wrote:
In letters published in the ''Haaretz'' and '']'' newspapers, Shahak criticized the political hypocrisy demonstrated by the radical Left in their uncritical support of the Palestinian nationalist movements.<ref name=JQuarterly/> In his obituary of Prof. Israel Shahak, ] said that Shahak's house was “a library of information about the human rights of the oppressed”, and that:
<blockquote>I emphatically declare that in all laws contained in the Jewish writings concerning theft, fraud, etc. no distinction is made between Jew and Gentile; that the (Talmudic) legal categories ], ''akum'' (idolater) etc., in no way apply to the people among whom we live.’<ref>Richard H. Schwartz https://books.google.com/books?id=7raS2sHgjO8C&pg=PA19 ''Judaism and Global Survival,'' Lantern Books rev.ed. 2001 pp.19-20.</ref></blockquote>


⚫ The following year Zeev Falk wrote that though he disapproved of Shahak's allegedly "invented case", it had a positive outcome. "While I dissociate myself from the methods of action of Dr. Israel Shahak, who invented the case of a Gentile who was not given treatment on the Sabbath, it was this fiction that led Chief Rabbi Unterman to issue a ruling permitting the violation of the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile".<ref>Falk (1967), pp. 47–53.</ref>
⚫ <blockquote>The families of prisoners, the staff of closed and censored publications, the victims of eviction and confiscation — none were ever turned away. I have met influential “civil society” Palestinians alive today who were protected as students when Israel was a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University; from him they learned never to generalize about Jews. And they respected him, not just for his consistent stand against discrimination, but also because — he never condescended to them. He detested nationalism and religion, and made no secret of his contempt for the grasping Arafat entourage. But, as he once put it to me, “I will now only meet with Palestinian spokesmen when we are out of the country. I have some severe criticisms to present to them. But I cannot do this while they are living under occupation, and I can ‘visit’ them as a privileged citizen.”<ref name=Hitchens>Hitchens (2001).</ref></blockquote>


⚫ Shahak repeated his account in the opening chapter of his 1994 book, ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'', stating that "Neither the Israeli, nor the ], rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that if the consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake."<ref>Shahak (1994), pp. 4-5.</ref>
;Author
Among the books publish by Israel Shahak are ''Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel'' (1994), co-authored by ], ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'' (1994), and ''Open Secrets: Israel’s Nuclear and Foreign Policies'' (1997). In the introduction to the 2004 edition of ''Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel'', the historian Mezvinsky said, “We realize that, by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism, we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others.”<ref>Shahak, Israel and Norton Mezvinsky ''Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel'' (2004 ed.), p. xxi.</ref>


Writing in 2008, Rabbi ] stated "From the beginning the story was curious. What prohibition could there possibly be in allowing someone else to use one's phone on the Sabbath?" He cited Eli Beer, chief coordinator of Israel's volunteer ambulance service, who "oversees 1,100 medical volunteers, approximately 60 percent of whom are Orthodox," as stating:
⚫ ==The telephone incident==
<blockquote>If someone would say we won't save a non-Jewish life on the Sabbath, he is a liar. If he is Jewish, Christian, or Muslim we save everyone's life on any day of the year, including the Sabbath and Yom Kippur, and I have done so myself. Indeed, as an orthodox Jew it is my greatest honor to save the life of a non-Jew, and I would violate any of the Jewish holy days to do so.<ref name=Boteach/></blockquote>
⚫ In 1965, Shahak wrote a letter to the '']'' newspaper, about an injustice he witnessed; that letter originated “the current major debate within and outside Israel about Orthodox Jewish attitudes to non-Jews.”<ref name=Rickman/> In the letter, Shahak said he witnessed an Orthodox Jew refuse the use of his telephone to call for an ambulance for a non-Jew, because it was the ].<ref>Rickman, Dan. '], ''1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East'', Macmillan Publishers, 2007, , ISBN 1429911670, 9781429911672 .</ref><ref>Bogdanor (2006), .</ref><ref name=Boteach>Boteach (2008).</ref> That the ], the rabbinical court of Jerusalem, had confirmed that the Orthodox Jew correctly understood '']'' law regarding non-Jews and the Sabbath, and quoted passages from a recent legal compilation.


⚫ ==''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years''==
Consequently, the cultural matter of a religiously-denied telephone became public political discussion in the Israeli press and in '']'', all of which directed attention to Shahak as a ] in the cultural politics of Israel.<ref name=Rickman/><ref name=Segev/><ref name=Boteach/> In the '']'' newspaper, the minister of religious affairs, Dr. ] said that the Orthodox rabbinical ruling was correct, but quoted Traditional Jewish passages that allowed a Jewish physician to save the life of a non-Jew on the Sabbath, despite not being religiously required to do so.<ref name=Segev/>
⚫ In 1994, Shahak published ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'', about Jewish fundamentalism; as described by history professor ], at Central Connecticut State University, the work is a:


⚫ <blockquote>scathing attack upon Classical Judaism and its more modern outgrowth, Orthodox Judaism. . . . As a lover of prophetic Judaism and as a disciple of Spinoza, Shahak, in a learned and rational manner, condemned the parochialism, racism, and hatred of non-Jews, which too often appeared in the Judaism that developed during and after the Talmudic period, and which, to a goodly extent, still exists.<ref> By Norton Mezvinsky, ], August/September 2001, page 11</ref></blockquote>
⚫ In 1966, Rabbi ] disputed the veracity of Shahak's story; that Prof. Israel Shahak had been compelled to admit that the Orthodox Jew of the incident he witnessed “simply did not exist . . . the whole incident had been fabricated, in true '']'' style.”<ref>, ''The Times'', 1 November 1999.</ref><ref>Jakobovits, Immanuel. , ''Tradition'', Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966.</ref> He cited a lengthy '']'', by ], the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, who said that “the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives”, and cited a ruling by Rabbi ] that Jews ''should'' desecrate the Sabbath to save a gentile’s life.<ref name=Rickman/><ref name=Boteach/><ref name=Schwartz>Schwartz (2002), .</ref><ref name=Tradition59>Jakobovits (1966), p. 59.</ref> The opinions of the rabbis derived from the book ''Noda B’Yehuda'' (''Known in Judah''), in which the 18th-century religious authority ] said: “I emphatically declare that in all laws contained in the Jewish writings concerning theft, fraud, etc. no distinction is made between Jew and Gentile; that the (Talmudic) legal categories ], ''akum'' (idolater) etc., in no way apply to the people among whom we live.”<ref>Schwartz, Richard H. https://books.google.com/books?id=7raS2sHgjO8C&pg=PA19 ''Judaism and Global Survival,'' Lantern Books rev.ed. 2001 pp.19-20.</ref>


⚫ The American intellectuals ] and ] praised the book, and each wrote an Introduction to an edition of ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion''.<ref>]: Page accessed 15 June 2012.</ref> Shahak proposes that the history of most nations initially is ], but that, in time, they evolve socially, through a period of critical self-analysis, to incorporate other social perspectives. Moreover, by the ], Jewish emancipation was a dual liberation, from Christian ] and from a traditional Jewish rabbinate, and its ‘imposed scriptural control.<ref>Hitchens (1997), p.xi.</ref> ] said that Shahak's examination of a fundamentalist Jewish religious tradition was invaluable:
⚫ In 1967, Prof. Ze'ev Falk said he had disproved the claims of Shahak: “While I dissociate myself from the methods of action of Dr. Israel Shahak, who invented the case of a Gentile who was not given treatment on the Sabbath, it was this fiction that led Chief Rabbi Unterman to issue a ruling permitting the violation of the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile.”<ref>Falk (1967), pp. 47–53.</ref>


⚫ <blockquote> concludes that “there can no longer be any doubt that the most horrifying acts of oppression in the West Bank are motivated by Jewish religious fanaticism.” He quotes from an official exhortation to religious Jewish soldiers about Gentiles, published by the Israeli army's Central Region Command in which the chief chaplain writes: “When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah (the legal system of classical Judaism) they may and even should be killed . . . In no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilised . . . In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed, and even enjoined, by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.”<ref>Fisk (1997).</ref></blockquote>
⚫ Despite the religious controversy, Shahak published his account of the religiously-denied telephone in the first chapter of ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'' (1994), and said that “neither the Israeli, nor the ] rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that, if the consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake.”<ref>Shahak (1994), pp. 4-5.</ref>


⚫ Moreover, the academic ], Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of British Columbia, criticizes specific passages in ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'' as being without “any foundation”, that Shahak was making “grotesque charges”: <ref name=JHJR>Cohn (1994), pp. 28-9.</ref>
In 2008, seven years after Shahak’s death, the controversy of religious interpretation continued when Rabbi ] doubted the veracity of Shahak’s report of Jewish injustice against a non-Jew: “From the beginning, the story was curious. What prohibition could there possibly be, in allowing someone else to use one’s phone on the Sabbath?” In support, he cited Eli Beer, the chief coordinator of Israel’s volunteer ambulance service (1,100 medical personnel, 60 per cent Orthodox), who said, “If someone would say we won’t save a non-Jewish life on the Sabbath, he is a liar. If he is Jewish, Christian, or Muslim we save everyone’s life on any day of the year, including the Sabbath and Yom Kippur, and I have done so myself. Indeed, as an Orthodox Jew it is my greatest honor to save the life of a non-Jew, and I would violate any of the Jewish holy days to do so.<ref name=Boteach/>


⚫ <blockquote>Dr. Shahak is full of startling revelations, if that is the word, about Jewish history and the Jewish religion. None of those I was able to check had any foundation . . . Some are just funny. He says (pp. 23-4) that “Jewish children are actually taught” to utter a ritual curse when passing a non–Jewish cemetery.<ref> “So now, one can read quite freely — and Jewish children are actually taught — passages such as that, which commands every Jew, whenever passing near a cemetery, to utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the mothers of the dead if it is non—Jewish.” Shahak (1994), pp. 23-24.</ref> He also tells us (p. 34) that “both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands . . . On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God . . . but on the other he is worshiping Satan. . . .”<ref name=JHJR/><ref>“Other prayers or religious acts, as interpreted by the Cabbalists, are designed to deceive various angels (imagined as minor deities with a measure of independence) or to propitiate Satan . . . both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands, uttering a special blessing. On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God, by promoting the divine union of Son and Daughter; but on the other he is worshiping Satan, who likes Jewish prayers and ritual acts so much that, when he is offered a few of them, it keeps him busy for a while, and he forgets to pester the divine Daughter.” Shahak (1994), p. 34.</ref></blockquote>
⚫ ==''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years''==
⚫ In 1994, Shahak published ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'', about Jewish fundamentalism; as described by history professor ], at Central Connecticut State University, ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'' is a:


⚫ ==Reception==
⚫ <blockquote>Scathing attack upon Classical Judaism and its more modern outgrowth, Orthodox Judaism. . . . As a lover of prophetic Judaism and as a disciple of Spinoza, Shahak, in a learned and rational manner, condemned the parochialism, racism, and hatred of non-Jews, which too often appeared in the Judaism that developed during and after the Talmudic period, and which, to a goodly extent, still exists.<ref> By Norton Mezvinsky, ], August/September 2001, page 11</ref></blockquote>
In his memoirs, ''To Be an Arab in Israel'', Palestinian poet ] described Shahak as a "remarkable and outstanding individual",<ref name="El-Asmar">El-Asmar (1975), p. 138.</ref> and ], who wrote the introduction to Shahak's ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'', described him there as 'the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets.'" According to Haim Genizi, "Shahak's extreme anti-Israeli statements were welcomed by the PLO and widely circulated in pro-Arab circles".<ref>Genizi (2002), p. 94.</ref>


⚫ After his death, Shahak received tributes from a number of sources. His friend and co-author the historian ] stated he was "a rare intellectual giant and a superior humanist", and ] described him as "a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity."<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/> ], who considered Shahak a "dear friend and comrade", said he was "a brilliant and devoted student of the archaeology of Jerusalem and Palestine", and that "during his chairmanship of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate."<ref name=Hitchens/> On ] ] described him as a "tireless translator and erudite footnoter" and "a singular man, an original",<ref>Cockburn (2001).</ref> while Allan C. Brownfeld, of the ], writing in the ], said he opposed "racism and oppression in any form and in any country", and had a "genuinely prophetic Jewish voice, one which ardently advocated democracy and human rights."<ref name=Brownfeld>Brownfeld (2001), p. 71.</ref> In his obituary in '']'' Elfi Pallis described him as "an old-fashioned ]",<ref name=Pallis/> while ] described him as "the last Israeli liberal", and stated that he was "above all one of the last philosophers of the 18th century school of enlightenment, rationalism, and liberalism, in the American meaning of the concept."<ref name=JQuarterly/>
⚫ The American intellectuals ] and ] each wrote an Introduction to an edition of ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion''.<ref>]: accessed 15 June 2012.</ref> Shahak proposes that the history of most nations initially is ], but that, in time, they evolve socially, through a period of critical self-analysis, to incorporate other social perspectives. Moreover, that, by the ], Jewish emancipation was a dual liberation, from Christian ] and from a traditional Jewish rabbinate, and their “imposed scriptural control”.<ref>Hitchens (1997), p. xi.</ref> The journalist ] said that Shahak's examination of fundamentalist Jewish religious tradition was invaluable:


⚫ Shahak has been accused of fabricating incidents, "]", distorting the normative meaning of Jewish texts, and misrepresenting Jewish belief and law.<ref name=JHJR/><ref name=Tradition>Jakobovits (1966).</ref> According to Paul Bogdanor, Shahak "regaled his audience with a stream of outrageous libels, ludicrous fabrications, and transparent hoaxes. As each successive allegation was exposed and discredited, he would simply proceed to a new invention."<ref>Bogdanor (2006), .</ref> Ari Alexander, co-founder of the Children of Abraham Organization for Jewish-Islamic dialogue, while noting the widespread use of Shahak's works by neo-Nazis and in Arab countries, concludes that:
⚫ <blockquote> concludes that “there can no longer be any doubt that the most horrifying acts of oppression in the West Bank are motivated by Jewish religious fanaticism.” He quotes from an official exhortation to religious Jewish soldiers about Gentiles, published by the Israeli army's Central Region Command, in which the chief chaplain writes: “When our forces come across civilians during a war, or in hot pursuit, or a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then, according to the '']'' (the legal system of Classical Judaism) they may and even should be killed . . . In no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilised. . . . In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed, and even enjoined, by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.”<ref>Fisk (1997).</ref></blockquote>


⚫ <blockquote>the texts that Shahak cites are real (though Shahak's sporadic use of footnotes makes it difficult to check all of them). Oftentimes, the interpretation of these texts is debatable and their prominence in Judaism negligible, but nonetheless, they are part of Jewish tradition and, therefore, cannot be ignored.<ref>Alexander, Ari. , ''MyJewishLearning.com''. Accessed June 13, 2010.</ref></blockquote>
⚫ Moreover, ], of the University of British Columbia, said that Shahak was making “grotesque charges” and that specific passages in ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'' are without foundation: <ref name=JHJR>Cohn (1994), pp. 28–29.</ref>


In reaction to his writings about ] and the ], Shahak has been accused of antisemitism.<ref name=JHJR/> The ] listed Shahak as one of four authors of polemics in its paper ''The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics'', while Bogdanor accused Shahak of "recycling Soviet antisemitic propaganda".<ref>Bogdanor (2006), .</ref>
⚫ <blockquote>Dr. Shahak is full of startling revelations, if that is the word, about Jewish history and the Jewish religion. None of those I was able to check had any foundation . . . some are just funny. He says (pp. 23–24) that “Jewish children are actually taught” to utter a ritual curse when passing a non–Jewish cemetery.<ref> “So now, one can read quite freely — and Jewish children are actually taught — passages such as that, which commands every Jew, whenever passing near a cemetery, to utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the mothers of the dead if it is non—Jewish.” ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'' (1994), pp. 23–24.</ref> He also tells us (p. 34) that “both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands . . . On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God . . . but on the other he is worshiping Satan. . . .”<ref name=JHJR/><ref>“Other prayers or religious acts, as interpreted by the Cabbalists, are designed to deceive various angels (imagined as minor deities with a measure of independence) or to propitiate Satan . . . both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands, uttering a special blessing. On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God, by promoting the divine union of Son and Daughter; but on the other he is worshiping Satan, who likes Jewish prayers and ritual acts so much that, when he is offered a few of them, it keeps him busy for a while, and he forgets to pester the divine Daughter.” ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years'' (1994), p. 34.</ref></blockquote>

⚫ ==Reception==
⚫ As a public intellectual, Israel Shahak was accused of fabricating the incidents he reported, of ], of distorting the ] meaning of Jewish religious texts, and of misrepresenting Jewish belief and law.<ref name=JHJR/><ref name=Tradition>Jakobovits (1966).</ref> Paul Bogdanor, said that Shahak “regaled his audience with a stream of outrageous libels, ludicrous fabrications, and transparent hoaxes. As each successive allegation was exposed and discredited, he would simply proceed to a new invention.”<ref>Bogdanor (2006), .</ref> Nonetheless, Ari Alexander, co-founder of the Children of Abraham Organization for Jewish–Islamic dialogue, said that, despite the use Shahak’s works by neo-Nazis and anti-Israel organisations in Arab countries:


In 1995 ] wrote of Shahak:
⚫ <blockquote>The texts that Shahak cites are real (though Shahak’s sporadic use of footnotes makes it difficult to check all of them). Often-times, the interpretation of these texts is debatable, and their prominence in Judaism negligible, but, nonetheless, they are part of Jewish tradition, and, therefore, cannot be ignored.<ref>Alexander, Ari. , ''MyJewishLearning.com''. Accessed 13 June 2010.</ref></blockquote>
<blockquote>Without question, he is the world's most conspicuous Jewish antisemite... Like the Nazis before him, Shahak specialized in defaming the Talmud. In fact, he has made it his life's work to popularize the anti-Talmud ruminations of the 18th century German antisemite, ].<ref>Cohn (1995), p. 18.</ref></blockquote>


] argues that Jews like Shahak act as enablers for antisemites, stating that their rhetoric plays a "crucial role... in excusing, condoning, and — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism." In his view:
Accusations of being an anti-Semite were among the responses to Shahak’s works about ] and the ].<ref name=JHJR/> In that vein, in ''The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics'', the ] (ADL) listed Prof. Israel Shahak as one of four authors of anti-Semitic polemics, and Bogdanor said that in his works, Shahak was “recycling Soviet anti-Semitic propaganda.”<ref>Bogdanor (2006), .</ref> ] said, “without question, he is the world’s most conspicuous Jewish anti-Semite. . . . Like the Nazis before him, Shahak specialized in defaming the Talmud. In fact, he has made it his life’s work to popularize the anti–Talmud ruminations of the eighteenth-century German anti-Semite, ].<ref>Cohn (1995), p. 18.</ref>
⚫ <blockquote>Anti-Semites rely on Jews to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur to such language and advocate such policies, how can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism for making the same arguments? The mechanism through which an anti-Semitic accusation becomes respectable once a Jew endorses it is not limited to Israel’s new historians... Israel Shahak made the comparison between Israel and Nazism respectable — all the while describing Judaism according to the medieval canons of the ].<ref>Ottolenghi (2006).</ref></blockquote>


While agreeing that Shahak's works contribute to antisemitism, Dan Rickman, writing in '']'', is not completely dismissive:
⚫ Moreover, ] said that Jews, such as Prof. Israel Shahak argues act as enablers for anti-Semites, because the rhetoric of anti-semitic Jews plays a “crucial role . . . in excusing, condoning, and — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism.” In his opinion, “Anti-Semites rely on Jews to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur to such language, and advocate such policies, how can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism, for making the same arguments? . . . The mechanism through which an anti-Semitic accusation becomes respectable once a Jew endorses it is not limited to Israel’s new historians. . . . Israel Shahak made the comparison between Israel and Nazism respectable — all the while describing Judaism according to the medieval canons of the ].<ref>Ottolenghi (2006).</ref>


Likewise, in agreement with Ottolenghi, the journalist Dan Rickman said that “Shahak ignores aspects of the sources. Further, through overstating his case, his analysis fits into anti-Semitic traditions of such accusations against the Talmud. Copies of the Talmud have been burned, and the text of the Talmud that is studied today is still heavily censored. Shahak's view that chauvinism in these sources in any way ‘justifies’ anti-Semitism is also very troubling. However, I do believe that his trenchant critique of Judaism is, tragically, not without some force. The contemporary situation is that we do see some modern Orthodox rabbis utilise xenophobic sources in modern rulings. Orthodox rabbis in organisations such as ] are sadly the exception rather than the rule.<ref name=Rickman/></blockquote> <blockquote>Shahak ignores ]al nature and ]] aspects of the sources. Further, through overstating his case, his analysis fits into antisemitic traditions of such accusations against the Talmud. Copies of the Talmud have been burned and the text of the Talmud that is studied today is still heavily censored. Shahak's view that chauvinism in these sources in any way "justifies" antisemitism is also very troubling.


However, I do believe that his trenchant critique of Judaism is, tragically, not without some force.
==Death==
At his death in 2001, Israel Shahak was the subject of tribute and criticism; the history lecturer, Prof. Haim Genizi, said that “Shahak’s extreme anti–Israeli statements were welcomed by the ], and widely circulated in pro–Arab circles”, in detriment to the interests of the State of Israel.<ref>Genizi (2002), p. 94.</ref> In the memoir, ''To Be an Arab in Israel'' (1975), the Palestinian poet Fouzi El-Asmar said that Shahak was a “remarkable and outstanding individual.”<ref name="El-Asmar">El-Asmar (1975), p. 138.</ref> ], author of a Foreword to the 2005 edition of ''Jewish History, Jewish Religion'', said Shahak was “the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets”, regarding the influence of religion upon the ] of society. ], said that his friend and collaborator was a “a rare intellectual giant and a superior humanist”; in that vein, ] said that Shahak was “a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity.”<ref name=Mezvinsky2001/>


The contemporary situation is that we do see some modern Orthodox rabbis utilise xenophobic sources in modern rulings. Orthodox rabbis in organisations such as ] are sadly the exception rather than the rule.<ref name=Rickman/></blockquote>
⚫ ] considered Shahak a “dear friend and comrade . . . a brilliant and devoted student of the archaeology of Jerusalem and Palestine”, who, “during his chairmanship of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate.”<ref name=Hitchens/> ] described Shahak the intellectual, the “tireless translator and erudite foot-noter . . . a singular man, an original.”<ref>Cockburn (2001).</ref> Allan C. Brownfeld, of the ], recalled the ] who actively opposed “racism and oppression in any form and in any country”; that Shahak possessed a “genuinely prophetic Jewish voice, one which ardently advocated democracy and human rights.”<ref name=Brownfeld>Brownfeld (2001), p. 71.</ref> In obituary, the journalist Elfi Pallis recalled Shahak the political activist, as essentially “an old-fashioned ]” in priciple, thought, and action.<ref name=Pallis/> Moreover, ] said that Israel Shahak was “the last Israeli liberal”, who was “above all, one of the last philosophers of the eighteenth-century school of enlightenment, rationalism, and liberalism, in the American meaning of the concept.”<ref name=JQuarterly/>


==Selected bibliography== ==Selected bibliography==

Revision as of 21:20, 9 October 2016

Israel Shahak
ישראל שחק
BornIsrael Himmelstaub
(1933-04-28)April 28, 1933
Warsaw, Poland
DiedJune 2, 2001(2001-06-02) (aged 68)
Jerusalem
Occupation(s)Professor, political thinker, author, and civil rights activist
Signature

Israel Shahak (Template:Lang-he; born Himmelstaub, April 28, 1933 – July 2, 2001) was a Polish Holocaust survivor and Israeli professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, known especially as a liberal secular political thinker, author, and civil rights activist. Between 1970 and 1990, he was president of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and was an outspoken critic of the Israeli government. Shahak's writings on Judaism have been a source of widespread controversy.

Biography

Born in Warsaw, Poland, Shahak was the youngest child of a cultured, religious, pro-Zionist, Ashkenazi Jewish family. During German occupation of Poland, his family was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. His brother escaped and joined the Royal Air Force. His mother paid a poor Catholic family to hide him, but when her money ran out he was returned. In 1943 he and his family were sent to the Poniatowa concentration camp, near Lublin, where his father died. Israel and his mother managed to escape and returned to Warsaw, but within the year, they were both sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Shahak was liberated from the camp in 1945, and shortly thereafter emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine, where he wanted to join a kibbutz, but was turned down as "too weedy".

From age 12, Shahak cared for and provided economic support for his mother who survived the Nazi camp in very poor physical condition. After a period of learning in a religious boarding school in Kfar Hassidim, he moved with his mother to Tel Aviv. After graduating from high school, Shahak served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in an elite regiment. After completing service with the IDF, he attended Hebrew University where he received his doctorate in chemistry. He became an assistant to Ernst David Bergmann, the chair of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1961, Shahak left Israel for the United States to study as a postdoctoral student at Stanford University. He returned two years later to become a popular teacher and researcher in chemistry at Hebrew University, and also became politically active. He published many scientific papers, mostly on organic fluorine compounds and contributed to cancer research. He remained at Hebrew University until he retired in 1990 because of concerns about his diabetes and desire to do other work.

For most of his adult life, Shahak lived in the Rehavia neighborhood of West Jerusalem. He died in Jerusalem at age 68 due to complications from diabetes and was buried in the Givat Shaul cemetery.

Politics and works

Shahak first became concerned about Israel’s direction because of David Ben-Gurion's statement during the 1956 Suez War that Israel was fighting for "the kingdom of David and Solomon." In the 1960s he became involved in the Israeli League Against Religious Coercion. In 1965, he began his political activism against “classical Judaism” and Zionism. That year he wrote a controversial letter to Haaretz alleging he had witnessed an Orthodox Jew “refusing to let his phone be used on the Sabbath to help a non-Jew who had collapsed nearby,” beginning a still continuing debate on Orthodox Jewish attitudes towards non-Jews.

Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Shahak disavowed his affiliation with the League Against Religious Coercion, stating they were "fake liberals" who used liberal principles to fight religious influence in Israeli society, but failed to apply them to Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Shahak then became active with the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and was elected its president in 1970. He remained a “moving spirit” of the organization for many years. The League for Human and Civil Rights, composed of Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, protested and publicized Israeli policies towards Palestinians and provided some legal and other aid to them. In 1969 Shahak and another Hebrew University faculty member staged a sit-down protest against the Israeli government jailing Palestinian students under emergency administrative detention regulations. In the following years, he supported Palestinian students' efforts to achieve equal rights at Hebrew University. In 1970 he established the Committee Against Administrative Detentions.

Shahak began publishing translations into English of Hebrew press accounts of Israeli activities he considered unjust or illegal, in order to publicize them to the wider world, and especially the United States. He sent his reports to journalists, academics and human rights campaigners, drawing attention with titles like “Torture in Israel,” and “Collective Punishment in the West Bank.” During the 1970s and ensuing decades he went on a number of speaking tours to universities, churches and other institutions in the United States and met privately with members of Congress and officials of the State Department. He became a well-known activist in international circles, co-authoring papers and giving joint speaking engagements with American political dissident Noam Chomsky, and winning plaudits from Jean-Paul Sartre, Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said.

Topics on which Shahak wrote included suppression of freedom of speech and political activity, land ordinances and confiscation, living restrictions, home destruction, unequal pay and work restrictions, emergency defense regulations, torture of prisoners, collective punishment, assassinations, discrimination in education and deprivation of citizenship. These activities earned Shahak great hostility in Israel and he even received death threats. After the 1982 Lebanon War he also wrote of Israeli abuses in Lebanon. Shahak promoted the theory that Israel's religious interpretation of Jewish history led it to disregard Arab human rights. He also began to argue that Zionism was a "regime based on structural discrimination and racism." Reviewer Sheldon Richman explains that for Shahak, Zionism was both a reflection of, and capitulation to, European antisemitism, "since it, like the anti-Semites, holds that Jews are everywhere aliens who would best be isolated from the rest of the world." In 1994 he published Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, in 1997 he published Open Secrets: Israel's Nuclear and Foreign Policies, and in 1994 he published Jewish Fundamentalism In Israel, co-authored with Norton Mezvinsky. In the introduction to the 2004 version of the book, Mezvinsky wrote that "We realize that by criticizing Jewish fundamentalism we are criticizing a part of the past that we love. We wish that members of every human grouping would criticize their own past, even before criticizing others."

In his last years, Shahak criticized hypocrisy in the Palestinian national movement, and the radical left for its uncritical support of the movement, publishing letters in Ha'aretz and Kol Ha'ir. In an obituary published in The Nation, Christopher Hitchens wrote that Shahak's home was "a library of information about the human rights of the oppressed", and that

The families of prisoners, the staff of closed and censored publications, the victims of eviction and confiscation--none were ever turned away. I have met influential "civil society" Palestinians alive today who were protected as students when Israel was a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University; from him they learned never to generalize about Jews. And they respected him not just for his consistent stand against discrimination but also because--he never condescended to them. He detested nationalism and religion and made no secret of his contempt for the grasping Arafat entourage. But, as he once put it to me, "I will now only meet with Palestinian spokesmen when we are out of the country. I have some severe criticisms to present to them. But I cannot do this while they are living under occupation and I can 'visit' them as a privileged citizen."

Alleged telephone incident

In 1965, Shahak wrote a letter to Ha'aretz which, according to Dan Rickman, writing in The Guardian in 2009, was the genesis for "he currently major debate within and outside Israel about Orthodox Jewish attitudes to non-Jews". In this letter Shahak wrote he had witnessed an Orthodox Jewish man refusing to allow his telephone to be used to call an ambulance for a non-Jew because it was the Jewish Sabbath. He also wrote that members of the rabbinical court of Jerusalem confirmed that the man was correct in his understanding of Jewish law, and that they backed this assertion by quoting from a passage from a recent compilation of law. The issue was subsequently taken up in Israeli newspapers and The Jewish Chronicle, leading to significant publicity. According to Israeli historian Tom Segev, Maariv asked for the opinion of the minister of religious affairs, Dr. Zerah Warhaftig, who did not refute the rabbinical ruling, but quoted from traditional Jewish sources according to which Jewish doctors had saved the lives of non-Jews on the Sabbath, although they were not required to do so."

In 1966, Immanuel Jakobovits, who later became Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Britain and the Commonwealth, disputed the veracity of Shahak's story. Jakobovits alleged that Shahak eventually had been forced to admit that the Orthodox Jew he wrote he had witnessed, in Jakobovits words, "simply did not exist." Jakobovits wrote that "The whole incident had been fabricated in true Protocols style". He cited a lengthy responsum by Isser Yehuda Unterman, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel at the time, who stated that, "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives," citing a ruling by Menachem Meiri that Jews should desecrate the Sabbath to save a gentile’s life. Yechezkel Landau in his Noda B’Yehuda wrote:

I emphatically declare that in all laws contained in the Jewish writings concerning theft, fraud, etc. no distinction is made between Jew and Gentile; that the (Talmudic) legal categories goy, akum (idolater) etc., in no way apply to the people among whom we live.’

The following year Zeev Falk wrote that though he disapproved of Shahak's allegedly "invented case", it had a positive outcome. "While I dissociate myself from the methods of action of Dr. Israel Shahak, who invented the case of a Gentile who was not given treatment on the Sabbath, it was this fiction that led Chief Rabbi Unterman to issue a ruling permitting the violation of the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile".

Shahak repeated his account in the opening chapter of his 1994 book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, stating that "Neither the Israeli, nor the diaspora, rabbinical authorities ever reversed their ruling that a Jew should not violate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a Gentile. They added much sanctimonious twaddle to the effect that if the consequence of such an act puts Jews in danger, the violation of the Sabbath is permitted, for their sake."

Writing in 2008, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach stated "From the beginning the story was curious. What prohibition could there possibly be in allowing someone else to use one's phone on the Sabbath?" He cited Eli Beer, chief coordinator of Israel's volunteer ambulance service, who "oversees 1,100 medical volunteers, approximately 60 percent of whom are Orthodox," as stating:

If someone would say we won't save a non-Jewish life on the Sabbath, he is a liar. If he is Jewish, Christian, or Muslim we save everyone's life on any day of the year, including the Sabbath and Yom Kippur, and I have done so myself. Indeed, as an orthodox Jew it is my greatest honor to save the life of a non-Jew, and I would violate any of the Jewish holy days to do so.

Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years

In 1994, Shahak published Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, about Jewish fundamentalism; as described by history professor Norton Mezvinsky, at Central Connecticut State University, the work is a:

scathing attack upon Classical Judaism and its more modern outgrowth, Orthodox Judaism. . . . As a lover of prophetic Judaism and as a disciple of Spinoza, Shahak, in a learned and rational manner, condemned the parochialism, racism, and hatred of non-Jews, which too often appeared in the Judaism that developed during and after the Talmudic period, and which, to a goodly extent, still exists.

The American intellectuals Gore Vidal and Edward Said praised the book, and each wrote an Introduction to an edition of Jewish History, Jewish Religion. Shahak proposes that the history of most nations initially is ethnocentric, but that, in time, they evolve socially, through a period of critical self-analysis, to incorporate other social perspectives. Moreover, by the Age of Enlightenment, Jewish emancipation was a dual liberation, from Christian anti-Semitism and from a traditional Jewish rabbinate, and its ‘imposed scriptural control. Robert Fisk said that Shahak's examination of a fundamentalist Jewish religious tradition was invaluable:

concludes that “there can no longer be any doubt that the most horrifying acts of oppression in the West Bank are motivated by Jewish religious fanaticism.” He quotes from an official exhortation to religious Jewish soldiers about Gentiles, published by the Israeli army's Central Region Command in which the chief chaplain writes: “When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah (the legal system of classical Judaism) they may and even should be killed . . . In no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilised . . . In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed, and even enjoined, by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.”

Moreover, the academic Werner Cohn, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of British Columbia, criticizes specific passages in Jewish History, Jewish Religion as being without “any foundation”, that Shahak was making “grotesque charges”:

Dr. Shahak is full of startling revelations, if that is the word, about Jewish history and the Jewish religion. None of those I was able to check had any foundation . . . Some are just funny. He says (pp. 23-4) that “Jewish children are actually taught” to utter a ritual curse when passing a non–Jewish cemetery. He also tells us (p. 34) that “both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands . . . On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God . . . but on the other he is worshiping Satan. . . .”

Reception

In his memoirs, To Be an Arab in Israel, Palestinian poet Fouzi El-Asmar described Shahak as a "remarkable and outstanding individual", and Gore Vidal, who wrote the introduction to Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, described him there as 'the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets.'" According to Haim Genizi, "Shahak's extreme anti-Israeli statements were welcomed by the PLO and widely circulated in pro-Arab circles".

After his death, Shahak received tributes from a number of sources. His friend and co-author the historian Norton Mezvinsky stated he was "a rare intellectual giant and a superior humanist", and Edward Said described him as "a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity." Christopher Hitchens, who considered Shahak a "dear friend and comrade", said he was "a brilliant and devoted student of the archaeology of Jerusalem and Palestine", and that "during his chairmanship of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, set a personal example that would be very difficult to emulate." On Antiwar.com Alexander Cockburn described him as a "tireless translator and erudite footnoter" and "a singular man, an original", while Allan C. Brownfeld, of the American Council for Judaism, writing in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, said he opposed "racism and oppression in any form and in any country", and had a "genuinely prophetic Jewish voice, one which ardently advocated democracy and human rights." In his obituary in The Guardian Elfi Pallis described him as "an old-fashioned liberal", while Michel Warschawski described him as "the last Israeli liberal", and stated that he was "above all one of the last philosophers of the 18th century school of enlightenment, rationalism, and liberalism, in the American meaning of the concept."

Shahak has been accused of fabricating incidents, "blaming the victim", distorting the normative meaning of Jewish texts, and misrepresenting Jewish belief and law. According to Paul Bogdanor, Shahak "regaled his audience with a stream of outrageous libels, ludicrous fabrications, and transparent hoaxes. As each successive allegation was exposed and discredited, he would simply proceed to a new invention." Ari Alexander, co-founder of the Children of Abraham Organization for Jewish-Islamic dialogue, while noting the widespread use of Shahak's works by neo-Nazis and in Arab countries, concludes that:

the texts that Shahak cites are real (though Shahak's sporadic use of footnotes makes it difficult to check all of them). Oftentimes, the interpretation of these texts is debatable and their prominence in Judaism negligible, but nonetheless, they are part of Jewish tradition and, therefore, cannot be ignored.

In reaction to his writings about Judaism and the Talmud, Shahak has been accused of antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League listed Shahak as one of four authors of polemics in its paper The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics, while Bogdanor accused Shahak of "recycling Soviet antisemitic propaganda".

In 1995 Werner Cohn wrote of Shahak:

Without question, he is the world's most conspicuous Jewish antisemite... Like the Nazis before him, Shahak specialized in defaming the Talmud. In fact, he has made it his life's work to popularize the anti-Talmud ruminations of the 18th century German antisemite, Johann Eisenmenger.

Emanuele Ottolenghi argues that Jews like Shahak act as enablers for antisemites, stating that their rhetoric plays a "crucial role... in excusing, condoning, and — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism." In his view:

Anti-Semites rely on Jews to confirm their prejudice: If Jews recur to such language and advocate such policies, how can anyone be accused of anti-Semitism for making the same arguments? The mechanism through which an anti-Semitic accusation becomes respectable once a Jew endorses it is not limited to Israel’s new historians... Israel Shahak made the comparison between Israel and Nazism respectable — all the while describing Judaism according to the medieval canons of the blood libel.

While agreeing that Shahak's works contribute to antisemitism, Dan Rickman, writing in The Guardian, is not completely dismissive:

Shahak ignores aspects of the sources. Further, through overstating his case, his analysis fits into antisemitic traditions of such accusations against the Talmud. Copies of the Talmud have been burned and the text of the Talmud that is studied today is still heavily censored. Shahak's view that chauvinism in these sources in any way "justifies" antisemitism is also very troubling.

However, I do believe that his trenchant critique of Judaism is, tragically, not without some force.

The contemporary situation is that we do see some modern Orthodox rabbis utilise xenophobic sources in modern rulings. Orthodox rabbis in organisations such as Rabbis for Human Rights are sadly the exception rather than the rule.

Selected bibliography

Main article: Israel Shahak bibliography
  • Israel Shahak, (ed.), The Non-Jew in the Jewish State; a collection of Documents, Jerusalem, 1975
  • Israel Shahak (ed), Begin & Co as they really are, Glasgow 1977
  • Israel Shahak and Noam Chomsky, Israel's Global Role: Weapons for Repression (Studies in Geophysical Optics and Remote Sensing), Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., April 1982, paperback, ISBN 0-937694-51-7
  • Israel Shahak, Israel's Global Role : Weapons for Repression (Special Reports, No. 4), Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982, paperback
  • Israel Shahak, (ed.), The Zionist Plan for the Middle East (a translation of Oded Yinon’s “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties” or the "Yinon Plan" , Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc., October 1982, paperback, ISBN 0-937694-56-8
  • Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years: Pluto Press, London, 1994, ISBN 978-0-7453-0819-7; Pluto Press, London, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7453-2840-9
  • Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Foreign and Nuclear Policies, Pluto Press, London, 1997
  • Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Middle Eastern Series), Pluto Press (UK), October, 1999, hardcover, 176 pages, ISBN 0-7453-1281-0; trade paperback, Pluto Press, (UK), October, 1999, ISBN 0-7453-1276-4; 2nd edition with new introduction by Norton Mezvinsky, trade paperback July, 2004, 224 pages

Notes

  1. ^ Warschawski (2001).
  2. "'The Life of Death': An Exchange" By Israel Shahak, (with a) Reply by Timothy Garton Ash, The New York Review of Books, Volume 34, Number 1, January 29, 1987. Quote from Shahak: "I was born in Warsaw (the subject of a large part of the essay) and was in the Warsaw Ghetto almost till the end;"
  3. Adams (2001). "Born in 1933 into a cultured Jewish family in Warsaw,".
  4. Pallis (2001). "After setbacks - he was rejected as 'too weedy' when he volunteered for a kibbutz - he became a model citizen."
  5. ^ Pallis (2001).
  6. ^ Adams (2001).
  7. ^ Mezvinsky (2001), p. 11.
  8. Science Citation Index
  9. ^ Hitchens (2001).
  10. ^ Rickman (2009).
  11. Richman (1989).
  12. Shahak, Mezvinsky (2004), p. xxi.
  13. ^ Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East, Macmillan Publishers, 2007, pp. 99-100, ISBN 1429911670, 9781429911672 .
  14. Bogdanor (2006), p. 121.
  15. ^ Boteach (2008).
  16. "In memory of Lord Jakobovits - A Sage in the Tradition of the Prophets", The Times, November 1, 1999.
  17. Jakobovits, Immanuel. A Modern Blood Libel--L'Affaire Shahak, Tradition, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1966.
  18. Schwartz (2002), p. 19.
  19. Jakobovits (1966), p. 59.
  20. Richard H. Schwartz https://books.google.com/books?id=7raS2sHgjO8C&pg=PA19 Judaism and Global Survival, Lantern Books rev.ed. 2001 pp.19-20.
  21. Falk (1967), pp. 47–53.
  22. Shahak (1994), pp. 4-5.
  23. In Memoriam: Israel Shahak (1933-2001) By Norton Mezvinsky, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 2001, page 11
  24. Werner Cohn: What Edward Said knows Page accessed 15 June 2012.
  25. Hitchens (1997), p.xi.
  26. Fisk (1997).
  27. ^ Cohn (1994), pp. 28-9.
  28. “So now, one can read quite freely — and Jewish children are actually taught — passages such as that, which commands every Jew, whenever passing near a cemetery, to utter a blessing if the cemetery is Jewish, but to curse the mothers of the dead if it is non—Jewish.” Shahak (1994), pp. 23-24.
  29. “Other prayers or religious acts, as interpreted by the Cabbalists, are designed to deceive various angels (imagined as minor deities with a measure of independence) or to propitiate Satan . . . both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands, uttering a special blessing. On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God, by promoting the divine union of Son and Daughter; but on the other he is worshiping Satan, who likes Jewish prayers and ritual acts so much that, when he is offered a few of them, it keeps him busy for a while, and he forgets to pester the divine Daughter.” Shahak (1994), p. 34.
  30. El-Asmar (1975), p. 138.
  31. Genizi (2002), p. 94.
  32. Cockburn (2001).
  33. Brownfeld (2001), p. 71.
  34. Jakobovits (1966).
  35. Bogdanor (2006), p. 119.
  36. Alexander, Ari. "Israel and Anti-Gentile Traditions", MyJewishLearning.com. Accessed June 13, 2010.
  37. Bogdanor (2006), p. 122.
  38. Cohn (1995), p. 18.
  39. Ottolenghi (2006).

References

External links

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