-Caveat Lector-
The Thirteenth Tribe, Appendix 4:
SOME IMPLICATIONS -ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA
While this book deals with past history, it unavoidably carries
certain implications for the present and future.
In the first place, I am aware of the danger that it may be
maliciously misinterpreted as a denial of the State of Israel's right
to exist. But that right is not based on the hypothetical origins
of the Jewish people, nor on the mythological covenant of
Abraham with God; it is based on international law -i.e., on
the United Nations' decision in 1947 to partition Palestine, once
a Turkish province, then a British Mandated Territory, into an
Arab and a Jewish State. Whatever the Israeli citizens' racial
origins, and whatever illusions they entertain about them, their
State exists dejure and defacto, and cannot be undone, except by
genocide. Without entering into controversial issues, one may
add, as a matter of historical fact, that the partition of Palestine
was the result of a century of peaceful Jewish immigration and
pioneering effort, which provide the ethical justification for the
State's legal existence. Whether the chromosomes of its people
contain genes of Khazar or Semitic, Roman or Spanish origin,
is irrelevant, and cannot affect Israel's right to exist-nor the
moral obligation of any civilized person, Gentile or Jew, to
defend that right. Even the geographical origin of the native
Israeli's parents or grandparents tends to be forgotten in the
bubbling racial melting pot. The problem of the Khazar infusion
a thousand years ago, however fascinating, is irrelevant to modern
Israel.
The Jews who inhabit it, regardless of their chequered origins,
possess the essential requirements of a nation: a country of their
own, a common language, government and army. The Jews of
the Diaspora have none of these requirements of nationhood.
What sets them apart as a special category from the Gentiles
amidst whom they live is their declared religion, whether they
practise it or not. Here lies the basic difference between Israelis
and Jews of the Diaspora. The former have acquired a national
identity; the latter are labelled as Jews only by their religion - not
by their nationality, not by their race.
This, however, creates a tragic paradox, because the Jewish
religion - unlike Christianity, Buddhism or Islam - implies
membership of a historical nation, a chosen race. All Jewish
festivals commemorate events in national history: the exodus from
Egypt, the Maccabean revolt, the death of the oppressor Haman,
the destruction of the Temple. The Old Testament is first and
foremost the narrative of a nation's history; it gave monotheism
to the world, yet its credo is tribal rather than universal. Every
prayer and ritual observance proclaims membership of an
ancient race, which automatically separates the Jew from the
racial and historic past of the people in whose midst he lives. The
Jewish faith, as shown by 2ooo years of tragic history, is nation-
ally and socially self-segregating. It sets the Jew apart and invites
his being set apart. It automatically creates physical and cultural
ghettoes. It transformed the Jews of the Diaspora into a pseudo-
nation without any of the attributes and privileges of nationhood,
held together loosely by a system of traditional beliefs based on
racial and historical premisses which turn out to be illusory.
Orthodox jewry is a vanishing minority. Its stronghold was
Eastern Europe where the Nazi fury reached its peak and wiped
them almost completely off the face of the earth. Its scattered
survivors in the Western world no longer carry much influence,
while the bulk of the orthodox communities of North Africa, the
Yemen, Syria and Iraq emigrated to Israel. Thus orthodox
Judaism in the Diaspora is dying out, and it is the vast majority
of enlightened or agnostic Jews who perpetuate the paradox
by loyally clinging to their pseudo-national status in the belief
that it is their duty to preserve the Jewish tradition.
It is, however, not easy to define what the term 'Jewish
tradition' signifies in the eyes of this enlightened majority, who
reject the Chosen-Race doctrine of orthodoxy. That doctrine
apart, the universal messages of the Old Testament - the enthrone-
ment of the one and invisible God, the Ten Commandments,
the ethos of the Hebrew prophets, the Proverbs and Psalms - have
entered into the mainstream of the judeo-Helenic-Christian
tradition and become the common property ofjew and Gentile
alike.
After the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews ceased to have a
language and secular culture of their own. Hebrew as a vernacular
yielded to Aramaic before the beginning of the Christian era;
the Jewish scholars and poets in Spain wrote in Arabic, others
later in German, Polish, Russian, English and French. Certain
Jewish conununities developed dialects of their own, such as
Yiddish and Ladino, but none of these produced works compar-
able to the impressive Jewish contribution to German, Austro-
Hungarian or American literature.
The main, specifically Jewish literary activity of the Diaspora
was theological. Yet Talmud, Kabbala, and the bulky tomes of
biblical exegesis, are practically unknown to the contemporary
Jewish public, although they are, to repeat it once more, the
only relics of a specifically Jewish tradition - if that term is to
have a concrete meaning - during the last two millennia. In
other words, whatever came out of the Diaspora is either not
specifically Jewish, or not part of a living tradition. The philoso-
phical, scientific and artistic achievements of individual Jews
consist in contributions to the culture of their host nations; they
do not represent a commoon cultural inheritance or autonomous
body of traditions.
To sum up, the Jews of our day have no cultural tradition
in common, merely certain habits and behaviour-pattems,
derived by social inheritance from the traumatic experience of
the ghetto, and from a religion which the majority does not
practise or believe in, but which nevertheless confers on them a
pseudo-national status. Obviously - as I have argued elsewhere -
the long-term solution of the paradox can only be emigration
to Israel or gradual assimilation to their host nations. Before
the holocaust, this process was in full swing; and in 1975 Time
Magazine reported that American Jews 'tend to marry outside
their faith at a high rate; almost one-third of all marriages are
mixed'.
Nevertheless the fingering influence of Judaism's racial and
historical message, though based on illusion, acts as a powerful
emotional break by appealing to tribal loyalty. It is in this context
that the part played by the thirteenth tribe in ancestral history
becomes relevant to the Jews of the Diaspora. Yet, as already
said, it is irrelevant to modern Israel, which has acquired a genuine
national identity. It is perhaps symbolic that Abraham Poliak,
a professor, of history at Tel Aviv University and no doubt an
Israeli patriot, made a major contribution to our knowledge of
jewry.'s Khazar ancestry, undermining the legend of the Chosen
Race. It may also be significant that the native Israeli 'Sabra'
represents, physically and mentally, the complete opposite of
the 'typical Jew', bred in the ghetto.
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