Thoughts about Zionism

Greetings classmates! I recently read a rather interesting article about Orthodox Jews and their feelings regarding Israel and Zionism as a whole. For those of you who don’t know, Zionism is the belief that Jews should live in and operate a Jewish state around Jerusalem, our holy city. According to a slightly radical website titled truetorahjews.org, “Israeli propaganda endangers Jews worldwide.” I will briefly summarize and respond to the article, but if you wish to read it in its purest form, you can visit the following link: http://www.truetorahjews.org/issues/france-denmark

Basically, the article argued that antisemitism has increased since Israel became an independent nation in May of 1948. It cited peace between Jews and Arabs prior to Zionism’s inception as the primary point. It also mentioned radical attempts to bomb the Temple Mount and the Israeli settlements in the West Bank as escalators of an unnecessary crisis and the main reasons for growing antisemitism.

Personally, I think that the Holocaust proved Israel’s inception to be an important step in the rebuilding of Jewish culture, but this blog is not meant to discuss my views, but to talk about the importance of the Hebrew language.

Last summer,during my “I only read books that relate to Judaism” phase, I devoted myself to a novel called Exodus by Leon Uris. The book was published in 1958 and highlights Israel’s early history. I still remember being shocked to learn that Orthodox Jews were against speaking Hebrew as a conversational language. They only believed it should be use in synagogue and religious settings and argued to keep Yiddish as the tongue-of-choice. As we know, Hebrew became Israel’s official language, but this article proves there are still people out there who wish to keep things the way they have always been.  I just thought it was interesting that we commonly associate all Jews with Israel, and, as this article pointed out, that is not the case.

On another note, I will continue to use transparent.com, an online language-learning site that has helped me enormously in the past few days. Too bad my free trial expires shortly! Hopefully, by then, my new textbook will have arrived!

And yes, this was posted far past my bedtime. Hell Week has taken its toll.