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This is Not the Way: Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel |
Few subjects invoke such passion as the history and current situation of Jews in Western societies. David Goldberg, a progressive rabbi with many years’ experience of dealing with other faiths and other Jews, takes the most difficult issues of this fraught relationship and confronts them head on. He argues that it is wrong to equate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, that it is far more difficult to be a Muslim in twenty-first century Britain than it is to be a Jew, that Israel is far too often treated sentimentally and that the identification of Israel with the Holocaust – memorializing the latter and sacralising the former – has had baneful effects. His discussion of the perennial question, ‘who is a Jew?’, is equally trenchant: he rejects all strict rabbinic criteria, proposing that a Jew is simply anyone who insists that he or she is one. Forthright, challenging and witty, This is Not the Way will spark debate, criticism and delight in equal measure.
Rabbi Dr David J Goldberg OBE is minister emeritus of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London. He is the author and editor of several books, including Aspects of Liberal Judaism (2004), The Divided Self: Israel and the Jewish Psyche Today (2006) and This is Not the Way: Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel (2012). Visit his website at www.rabbidavidjgoldberg.com.
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April 25th, 2012 at 3:49 pm
David Goldberg is an intelligent, likeable and engaging speaker who has led a fascinating life. However, as much as I enjoyed this event, I couldn’t help feeling that it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
Goldberg’s tales of travelling to Israel in his youth, and of his time spent living on a kibbutz, were genuinely entertaining. Furthermore, his musings on the historical development of the Jewish identity were very informative. However, it was a long way into the talk before Goldberg began to address the current situation in Israel and the wider Middle East.
He spoke at some length about how he feels that some Jews “use” the Holocaust to “justify unacceptable behaviour”, and how Jewish criticism of Israel sparks (ultimately counter-productive?) accusations of “self-hate” and even anti-Semitism. Important – and controversial – issues, of course; but despite passing and frankly fairly superficial references to the two-state solution, the “ironically named” Peace Process and the thorny issue of Jewish settlements, Goldberg seemed reluctant to discuss in any great detail why he has become so disillusioned with “plucky little Israel”.
Indeed, at one point, when answering a question from the floor about Israel’s current leadership, Goldberg seemed to break off to say that he didn’t want to get into a political discussion. Perhaps I misheard – I was sitting at the back of the room – but if this is the case, it is puzzling in the extreme.
Whether Goldberg is comfortable with the fact or not, his talk here was irredeemably political almost from start to finish. I for one would have been grateful if he had acknowledged this by providing a more forensic analysis of the reasons behind his claim that “This Is Not The Way”.