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 Palestine/Israel Jun 20, 2008
Very interesting, brings a wnhole other approach to an age old issue. It certainly sheds an interesting light on the current situation.
 "Palestinian" redemption May 16, 2008
The history part: Throughout history, the people of Israel has undergone multiple holocausts carried out on two fronts: physical extermination holocausts and religious forced conversion holocausts. Physical holocaust of millions of Jews occurred from the days of the Assyrians, Babylonians, then Romans, Arabs, Crusadors, through Spaniards, Kozaks and Germans. Not to speak about the continuous discriminations and killing Jews all over the world by individuals and communities in pogroms etc. in smaller scales.
Most often, the holocaust came in combination of an extermination and a choice of forced conversion. For all intents and purposes, the number of Jews who were forced to convert to the conquerors' religion of choice equals the number of Jews who refused to convert and knowingly chose death (this is known to have happened for example in Spain).
According to different calculations, were these holocausts not have happened, the Jewish nation would be numbered today upwards of one half billion people! It must be noted that half of those Jews did not disappear from the Jewish faith due to death but rather due to forced conversions as a result of fear from death.
One particular group of Jews, in the land of Israel, that was forced to convert in order to save their lives, did so from the fear of the Islamic sword. The Jewish community that remained in the Holy Land was forced to relinquish their religion in exchange for Islam, which in philosophical values was close to that of Judaism. In addition, in Islam, there is the common value with Judaism of the single deity. It is for these reasons that it was easier for the Jews of the land of Israel to claim an acceptance of Islam, when all that was required of them was to declare a faith to a single deity and the belief of Mohammed as a prophet.
It was the hope of these individuals, who surrendered to the threat of death by converting, that within a short period of time this decree would be lifted and that they would be permitted to return to their original faith - Judaism. To their disappointment, this did not happen and as part of the forced conversion, they were forced to educate their children in accordance with the Muslim culture, causing the loss of their Jewish identity. However, this forced conversion was not always successful in erasing these people's memories of their Jewish origin. As it turns out, these people remained in the land of Israel while the various conquering armies left, leaving behind a considerably small demographic influence.
The solution part: This book brings up the basic problems within the Jewish identity: does it rely on physical inheritance or on a mental and idological one? (Obviously, if it relies exclusively on the physical, a Palestinian might be automatically considered to be a Jew.) This question is widely discussed in the Jewish religious literature where the conclusion is a compromise between the two approaches.
In reality, one's origins influence his views and these influence over the generations his origins. It turns out that some method of a minimal merger of the two, with a strong emphasis on the mental and idological ingredient in order to determine if one belongs to the Jewish brotherhood that according to the Halakha is the base for the right to live in the Holy Land. This situation in the case in our hands here is not similar, though there is a value in stating that the community referred to as "Palestinian" is in its origin a Hebrew one. There is a place for reconnecting this community with the Hebrew culture from which it was forcefully removed by the Islamic sword. In fact, there is stipulation within the Jewish religion for welcoming back to Judaism those who converted away from it by force rather than choice. A natural occurrence when a person becomes aware that part of his ancestral history includes a religion and culture different than his current ones is his desire to investigate this background. It is not so hard to believe that upon learning that the change away from the original religion to the current one was forced, this person might be inclined to re-examine his current education and views with a new perspective.
In addition, the proper treatment of the "Palestinian" community and the calculated welcoming of it to the Hebrew culture may bring about a radical change of cultural character of these people. Careful cultural measures could bring about the emancipation of this miserable community, and to defuse the ticking time bomb towards peace in the world as in this community the most dangerous views of Islamic terrorism were developed, dangerous to the survival of humanity. The education of this community with a greater emphasis on peacefulness, through the teaching of basic lifestyle commandments (called in Judaism"the seven commandments for the sons of Noah") as a first step towards positive cultural evolution, will most probably heavily contribute towards bringing about calm to the world of extreme Islam.
Rabbi Dov Stein
Sanhedrin's Secretary
dbtc@actcom.com
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