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From: mike@WISDOM.BITNET (Mike Trachtman)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Racism and Judaism
Message-ID: <8602201930.AA22598@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thu, 20-Feb-86 15:03:28 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8602201930.AA22598
Posted: Thu Feb 20 15:03:28 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Feb-86 09:09:02 EST
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There is a proposal in the Knesset, here in Israel, to
prohibit the public preaching toward racism, (crude interpretation of
'hasata ligizanut').  This law is of course meant to put the Kach
party outside of the law, or at least their espousing their platform.
(Kach is the political party lead by Rabbi Kahana, of JDL fame, who is
now a member of the Israely Parliment, the Kenesset).

This law has two fascinating things about it.

1) The second part of the same law, would prohibit the denial
        that Israel is fundamentally a Jewish state.
                This to me, is a racist comment, and thus implicitly
contradicts, the first part of the law.

The second, and more important comment is that the religious parties,
want an addition to the law, that would say 'anything in the
Jewish religion (halacha), will not be construed as being racist.'

The reason for this, is due to many halachot, which are racist,
and thus anyone espousing that someone be religious, would be
violating these laws.  Examples that the Religious members of parliment
gave, include havdalah (hamavdil bein yisrail la'amim), separate
cemetaries, disallowing intermarriage, etc.
(how about macho timche et zecher amalek, which is pure Genocide, though not
relevant to today, due to the 'lucky' accident, that there are no identified
Amalekies walking around.)

I think it funny, when politicians in Israel, send the Jewish Agency to
preach against intermarriage in the US and Europe, but in Israel
would find anyone preaching against intermarriage to be violating
the law.

Thus in summarry, what do people on the net think should be the
balance between racism of various sorts (different rights,
separation of communities) on the one hand, and halachik,
religious, or nationalistic Judaism on the other.

And, would it be fair to say, that very Orthodox people are very
Racist in their Utopian view of how the Jewish nation and homeland,
(i.e. am yisrael bi-eretz yisrael bizman hazeh ubizman hamaschiach),
should be? and if so, is that a convincing argument not to be
very Orthodox, but to take a more moderate view of what it is to be
a Jew, that prefers Jews to stick together, but does not disallow
other peoples from living together with us.

Mike

                                Mike Trachtman
My address:

        mike@wisdom                             (BITNET)
        mike%wisdom.bitnet@wiscvm.ARPA          (ARPA/CSNET)
        mike%wisdom.bitnet@berkley              (ARPA/CSNET)
and if all else fails (ONLY for VERY short items)
        ...!decvax!humus!wisdom!mike            (UUCP)