No pure Jewish blood

Op-ed: Minister Yishai’s war against foreign children contradicts Jewish realities, past

Yoram Kaniuk|Published: 08.22.10 , 17:26

The fear of foreign migrants’ children is about fear of assimilation. “Our people shall be contaminated,” is what Interior Minister Eli Yishai in fact says.

But I looked in the mirror and realized how eastern European I look. Meanwhile, I have a Yemenite friend who looks Yemenite. My mother had a slightly Mongol look, because she was born in Odessa, and all sorts of things happened there.

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So where does the Moroccan look of relentless fighter Yishai, who leads the struggle to keep our blood pure, come from? Are all those facial similarities a result of the weather or of the water drank by the various Jews in the Diaspora? Or could is simply be that much non-Jewish blood had flown in our veins by now? Ben-Gurion once said that if anyone wishes to be Jewish and share the Jewish destiny with us, they should be blessed. Yet the religious fear this kind of mixing.

There is no such thing as pure Jewish blood, Mr. Yishai! Only the Germans believed in purity of blood. The Jews, on the other hand, only gained from intermarriage over the generations. Had they not assimilated in terms of bloodlines and remained ancient Jews, we would be like countries whose names I don’t wish to mention here.

Those who marry within the family risk disease. Contrasts, on the other hand, create culture. King David, Moses, Abraham, and most Israelite kings married foreign women. Some foreign children will not undermine Israel’s national Judaism either.

Longing for Jeremiah

The fact that current-day rabbis are unfamiliar with 1,000 years of great Judaism, instead resorting to racist rulings, taints our life here and our name in the world. At this time there are no truly Christian states out there and several Muslim states, which constitute a grave problem.

Yet Yishai wants such country here. He is among those who seek to establish the Temple here and restore the old glory. Yet we made it to this day and age along with Yohanan Ben Zakai, who set up a Judaism that would not be subjected to blood and racism against the lame and blind. He would not have deported children who grew up in this country only because their blood isn’t pure.

My father’s family lost 60 people who were buried alive one night in Galicia, because they did not have enough pure blood. Yishai would do well to learn something from that. The same is true for the prime minister, who backs Yishai while keeping an eye on his chair for fear of being toppled; it’s also true for Labor Party members, most of whom voted in favor of the deportations.

There is no such thing as pure blood. Not all religious people are good, and not all non-religious people are bad. There are bad and good guys, smart and foolish ones, on both sides of the Jewish spectrum. So why is it that this hateful man of all people, who embitters the lives of every foreigner in this country, allowed to detach Israel from the world, from our Zionist past, and from the polyphonic Jewish past, which is about variety? Too bad we don’t have Prophet Jeremiah here instead.