The Wrath of Jonah:
Baum, Gregory
BOOKS Can Jews & Arabs embrace 'shalom'? Trying to come to grips with the Holocaust, Christian scholars have uncovered the anti-Jewish rhetoric contained, almost from the beginning, in Christian...
...But Rosemary Rue-ther's solidarity with the Jews and her courageous struggle against the theological roots of anti-Semitism is beyond question...
...The marginalization of a people and the military occupation of a territory generate a multitude of laws, rules, customs, and practices that humiliate the human beings thus affected and at the same time damage the humanity of the dominator...
...They also tended to be silent about the human rights of Palestinians about which often they felt guilty...
...The new political Zionism picked up and transformed earlier religious aspirations...
...The critical analysis of Zionist ideology makes this a bold book, one that will create controversy...
...Even in the United States, the book argues, Jews are slowly abandoning the Zionist theory...
...Many of them have abandoned the theory that the Jews are a nation in the political sense and ought to be established in the Holy Land...
...The chapter also offers a detailed analysis of the marginalization of Palestinians in Israel, and of the oppression inflicted by the Israeli government on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories...
...Trying to come to grips with the Holocaust, Christian scholars have uncovered the anti-Jewish rhetoric contained, almost from the beginning, in Christian religious literature...
...While the evolution of Palestinian nationalism has arrived at a point where recognition, dialogue, and cooperation have become real possibilities, the corresponding evolution of the Israeli self-understanding has not yet fully matured...
...In reaching out to Jews in dialogue and friendship, Christians-especially in North America-have tended to become uncritical supporters of the state of Israel...
...Nor do these Israelis look upon their nation as the ideal location for the entire Jewish people...
...The theory that the Jews were a nation in the political sense and should live as a nation in the Holy Land was promoted by several movements, religious and secular, in part as a response to, and in part as a reflection of nineteenth-century European nationalism...
...Israel is no longer the safe haven, but a military society: it has to wrestle with its own structures of inequality and economic dependencies, including billions of dollars in yearly American aid...
...To clarify, heal, and reconcile the human situation-her aim has always been to promote the biblical shalom-she analyzes the pathological elements hidden in the different ideologies, trusting that once these elements are brought to light, they can be overcome by the creativity at the heart of every great religious tradition...
...More important, the book as a whole follows the methodology Rosemary Ruether has brilliantly applied in herprevious writings...
...While this movement was opposed by mainstream Zionism, it is impossible to understand the present policies of the Israeli government without taking this ultranationalist heritage into account...
...It also had a shadow side, one that is not well known...
...Their study of the Middle East conflict analyzes its complex history and uncovers the ideological distortions in order to facilitate a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians...
...Even when Jews became secular, they tended to preserve their heritage, solidarity with their people, commitment to the ethical message, and attachment to their biblical origins...
...In a spirit of grief and repentance Christian theologians, supported by their churches, have sought to free the Christian message from anti-Jewish elements...
...Secular Israelis are increasingly embarrassed by the public claim that God gave this land to them...
...Classical Judaism defined Jewish identity through the dynamic interplay of people, Torah, and land...
...The chapter entitled "The Contradictions of the Jewish State" is likely to provoke some controversy...
...The book concludes with proposals for peace...
...To clarify the historical background, The Wrath of Jonah, by way of introduction, offers a summary of what people-hood, covenant, and land mean in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...
...There have, of course, always been Orthodox Jews who rejected Zionism as a political messianism at odds with Scripture...
...The two authors point to a new cultural and religious vitality among American Jews, who- while not neglecting Israel-are turning again to the traditional Jewish themes of social justice and, for some, religious fidelity...
...The more deeply Christian theologians were involved in opening the church to the appreciation of Jewish religion, the more reluctant they have been to criticize the human rights violations committed by Israel...
...The authors here base themselves on Joseph Scheerman's The Jabotinsky Story and Lenni Brenner's The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir...
...But this would be an incorrect interpretation of the book...
...But if this should happen, it will not invalidate the thrust of the chapter...
...This makes very unpleasant reading...
...At the same time, the book tries to show that Zionist theory is in fact crumbling among growing numbers of Jews in Israel and elsewhere...
...What is new here is that her and her husband's solidarity is now extended to the Palestinian people...
...The Zionist movement was made up of many different currents...
...The major sections of the book deal more precisely THE WRATH OF JONAH The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Rosemary Radford Ruether and Herman J. Ruether Harper & Row, $19.95, 269 pp...
...It envisages the reconciliation of the two Middle Eastern nations, Israel and Palestine, and a renewed flowering of Jewish religion.f Jewish religion...
...Her Faith and Fratricide, published in 1974, has remained an influential book for longer than a decade...
...It is possible to read this book by concentrating on the passages critical of Israel and critical of theories to which many Jews are deeply attached, and then come to the conclusion that the authors are partial to the Palestinians and hostile to the Jews...
...The Zionist theory, the book argues, prompts the Israeli government to make claims in regard to the land that leave no room for another people...
...They remain deeply concerned about Israel and want to do everything to help, but they think of themselves as Americans...
...The book examines the current led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, sometimes called "Revisionist Zionism," which copied the worst aspects of European nationalism: glorification of power and violation of justice...
...In this sense The Wrath of Jonah is a hopeful book...
...In this daring and important book, Rosemary Ruether and Herman Ruether take the bull by the horns...
...If this trend wins out, negotiations between the two nations, Palestinian and Israeli, become possible and may arrive at a constructive solution...
...The Jews were a people, widely dispersed, sent to give witness to God and God's ethical message...
...Since the authors rely on recent studies highly debated in Israel and on records assembled by various Middle Eastern research institutes, some of the "facts" may turn out to be unreliable...
...Despite the effort of political leaders, Zionist theory is giving way to a more modest, more realistic Israeli national self-understanding...
...Israelis tend to think of themselves as a nation...
...Zionism, as defined in the book, is the theory that the Jews constitute a nation in the political sense and, as such, have the right, divinely conferred, to the Holy Land...
...Relying on recent, critical historical studies published in Israel, the chapter unmasks some of the glorious myths associated with the foundation of Israel and its increasing power...
...Gregory Baum with the origin and development of Zionism, the emergence of Palestinian nationalism, the present situation of Palestinians in the Jewish state and the occupied territories, and the reactions of Christians to Judaism, Zionism, and the Holocaust...
...At the same time the Jews retained a special relation to the land, a relation that was full of promise and ethical meaning...
...Prior to World War II a majority of Jews rejected the Zionist theory, yet as a response to the Holocaust, a majority became sympathetic to the Zionist cause...
...The chapter on the evolution of Palestinian nationalism acknowledges the crimes against humanity committed by some Palestinian groups and is strongly critical of the Arab states, the colonial powers, and some Palestinian leaders for their roles in perpetuating the conflict...
...Today secular Israelis increasingly see themselves as a small, Middle Eastern nation that wants peace...
...The authors contrast this theory with the self-understanding of the Jews through the long period of history when they saw themselves as a religious community...
...they do not feel that they ought to live in Israel or that staying in America is an act of cowardice...
...The Ruethers argue that Zionist theory prevents the Israeli government and a great number of Jews in Israel and in other parts of the world from recognizing that the Palestinians are a people with the right to self-determination, and not just groups of Arabs that happen to live in these territories...
Vol. 116 • June 1989 • No. 11
