What is Judaism (“Yahaduth”)?

          In the Diaspora, the rabbis extended the Mosaic religion, under the name of Judaism (“Yahaduth”) invented by the Tannaim in the third century, as an alternative identity to the Hebrew ethnic, cultural, national and state identity. In order to strengthen Judaism, the alternative that serves the exclusivity of their hegemony, rabbis damaged and continue to harm the Hebrew ethnic, cultural, national and state existence. Judaism, as an alternative to the Hebrew state, national and ethnic identity, contradicts the historical lesson, and the attempt to cover up this fact by according Judaism a supreme significance is ridiculous, as it would be giving a supreme significance to Anglicanism, for instance.

For two thousand years of inexistence of the Hebrew national state and the Hebrew national identity, “Judaism” was their surrogate, and its institutions were a surrogate for national institutions. True, “Judaism” played a decisive role in this period, but the return to the national territory and the resurrection of the national state prove by themselves that, after two thousand years of suffering, discriminations, persecutions, and pogroms culminating in the Holocaust, people reached the conclusion that the surrogate had failed as a substitute for “the real thing”. Therefore, substantial sections of our people preferred to have their fate in their own hands through a national state, national institutions, democratically elected national leaders, a national army, all these according to democratic laws and constitution. True, in the pages of history all the surrogates should also be mentioned and their role should be acknowledged, even when there is no more need for the surrogates since the very existence of “the real thing”: If we even remember and acknowledge the role played by chicory as a surrogate for coffee in times of need and shortage, we should certainly remember and acknowledge that Judaism, as a surrogate for a national state with national and ethnic identity, has indeed played an historical role, although it is not needed any more as a surrogate for the real thing, and therefore should return to its natural dimensions as the Mosaic Religion.

The attempt to maintain our state as “Jewish” and the impossibility to project the religious identity, Judaism, onto all the citizens as a national identity, accelerate negative processes:

A.  The expropriation of the fundamental prerogative of the national state to project its national identity onto its citizens and their abandonment in the hands of the religious institutions. As an outcome, the religious establishment gets the legitimacy to pretend that the rabbis are the alternative to the democratically elected representatives, that the religious institutions (Rabbinate, rabbinical courts and councils) are the alternative to the national institutions (Parliament, Government, Law Courts), that the Halacha is the alternative to constitution and parliament legislated laws.

B.  The creation of national minorities entitled to “national rights” (auto determination, independence) and seeking to fulfill “national aspirations” (like irredentism) and the transformation of the state into a multinational one, instead of the proclaimed national state whose citizens belong to the same nation which contains ethnic groups entitled to “ethnic rights” (ethnic culture).

Next Chapter – Who is a Judean? Who is a “Jew”?

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