Subscribe to Print Edition | Thu., January 03, 2008 Tevet 25, 5768 | | Israel Time: 17:47 (EST+7)
Haaretz israel news English
web haaretz.com
  Back to Homepage
Rosner's Domain
Diplomacy
Defense Jewish World Opinion National
Print Edition
Advertising
Books Arts & Leisure Business Real Estate Easy Start Travel Week's End Anglo File Magazine
Be a Jew at home
By Yitzhak Laor

On Christmas eve, many Hebrew-speaking Jewish couples could be seen coming out of church in Jaffa after midnight mass. It is highly unlikely that you would find their counterparts in the West, i.e., non-Jews of the same social standing and educational level, going to any church on Christmas. Midnight mass in the churches of the West, at least in those countries that pride themselves on being secular, is only meant for the religious, specifically religious Christians. For everyone else, Christmas is a family event characterized by a mixture of semi-bourgeois and age-old semi-religious customs.

This has nothing to do with loving the music of Bach or rushing into the arms of Jesus, the son of Mary, as born-again Christians.

The Israeli eagerness to embrace Christian culture, as part of Western life, is not something sudden. It has been creeping slowly into Israeli culture, with a kind of historical cunning. It is enough to think about funeral rites in Europe, presided over by priests, while secular Jews in Israel stubbornly refuse to be buried in a Jewish service that includes the mourner's kaddish and traditional graveside prayers.
Advertisement
Sometimes, this Israeli craving for things Christian has a colonial aspect. Every week we watch people on TV discussing the percentage of Muslim citizens in Europe. Sometimes, it feels as if Israeli television anchors have become partners to the infamous dream of Europe as a "continent free of non-Christians."

A generation after Europe set out to destroy its non-Christians, summing up many long years of hatred, discourse in the West on the subject of its Judeo-Christian past has become one of the most consensual lies. Ehud Barak, in an interview with Benny Morris published in The New York Review of Books in June 2002, went as far as to say that Arabs "don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture."

It would be wrong to assume that this "slow Christianizing" of Jewish intellectuals is linked only to a pursuit of "Western values" in the face of the mounting hatred of Islam, here and in the West. The roots of this strange self-negation must be sought in the history of the Jewish people in the last 150 years. When the first "enlightened Jews," as they are called today, accepted the imperative to "be a human being outside and a Jew at home," the Jews took on a form of colonized existence. In European enlightenment terms, Jews (and now Muslims) were supposed to shed their Judaism when they mingled with the world. To be a "human being" was to be a "Christian," of course, or to be what the West considered a secular person.

A Christian is never asked to be "a human being outside and a Christian at home." What is sometimes called, in our nationalist kitsch, "self-hatred" is deeply implanted within us because we swallowed the European bait: To be a human being means to look like them.

Israelis who watch non-Western clothing being ridiculed in the European media and feel a certain relief have clearly forgotten those pictures in Yad Vashem of Jewish men having their sidecurls snipped off. But it is worth remembering that identifying modernity with "outward appearance" is related to that same self-hatred.

Women who wear head-coverings and wigs, and men who grow sidecurls, interfere with our desire to belong to the West.

This hatred reached an all-time high in the way people viewed Shas. Some of it was manifested in the sudden surge of solidarity between homophobes and homosexuals during the outcry over the gay pride parade.

Obviously, not all Shas-haters go to church on Christmas, and not all of those who go to church on Christmas have a soft spot for American missionaries.

It is not a homogeneous trend. These are symptoms of a profound ignorance of the "Jewish condition," or the situation we are living in, to be more exact.

The number of Jewish Israelis refusing to circumcise their sons is probably not even one percentage, no matter how "secular" they are.

So what we are looking at, above all, is a tremendous loathing for our lives here - as if the ongoing conflict, the poverty, and the breakdown of the state were all here when our parents arrived, and not the product of their immigration, or an outcome of the Western attitude toward Jews over hundreds of years.
Bookmark to del.icio.us  
 
Holocaust education
For Dutch instructors, Islamophobia can be a teaching aid for Holocaust studies.
White House race
Edwards is the angry candidate; Obama prefers conciliation.
  1.   there is a great deal to be said for christian culture 09:11  |  flashman 05/01/07
  2.   MUSLIM BAIT, AMERICAN BAIT 09:41  |  indrajaya 05/01/07
  3.   Self-Hatred VERSUS (Compared To/With) FINE TUNING/Evolving. 09:54  |  Proud Pal Defender 05/01/07
  4.   "the problem of telling lies" 09:58  |  Alex 05/01/07
  5.   There is no Christianization 09:59  |  Shlomo from Tel-Aviv 05/01/07
  6.   Wow - so much generalization 09:59  |  Thinker 05/01/07
  7.   There is no monolithic Christian cluture 09:59  |  Christian 05/01/07
  8.   Yitzhak Laor talks about self-hatred. That`s fresh! 10:16  |  Jake 05/01/07
  9.   midnite mass 10:19  |  ROB OF MELBOURNE AUS 05/01/07
  10.   "Christian" is Khalid 10:28  |  Gina 05/01/07
  11.   Well Let`s See! 10:31  |  Yosemite Sam 05/01/07
  12.   Besides... 10:34  |  Yosemite Sam 05/01/07
  13.   What`s The "Loathing Our Lives Here" BS?? 10:35  |  Terry 05/01/07
  14.   7. Christian: Monolitic culture 10:38  |  KUTW 05/01/07
  15.   Haskalah versus Reformed Judaism 10:46  |  Paqid 16 Netzarim 05/01/07
  16.   indrajaya casts bait 10:46  |  izzy 05/01/07
  17.   10Gina 10:48  |  KUTW 05/01/07
  18.   a haven for the unsteady 11:07  |  JW 05/01/07
  19.   #9 Rob - maaate 11:09  |  alsofromaus 05/01/07
  20.   reality check 11:44  |  dubious 05/01/07
  21.   Happy New Year Kim! 11:51  |  Gina 05/01/07
  22.   Non-Christian Christmas 12:09  |  Göran Z 05/01/07
  23.   Hooray for sensible jews! 12:25  |  dana 05/01/07
  24.   Please, remain jewish.... 12:26  |  Edith 05/01/07
  25.   About circumcision 12:34  |  Edith 05/01/07
  26.   Judaism and Christianity 13:03  |  Naim S. Mahlab 05/01/07
  27.   I visited Paris 13:22  |  Dror 05/01/07
  28.   Naim you are right 13:45  |  Dror 05/01/07
  29.   Yes, some Jews should be ashamed 13:45  |  Ze`ev ben Shmaryahu 05/01/07
  30.   I like it here 13:59  |  Israel israeli 05/01/07
  31.   Gina Christianity and Judaism are contradictory 14:04  |  former Jew 05/01/07
  32.   There is always a fringe 14:04  |  Ilan 05/01/07
  33.   Christianity`s pathology with Jews 14:05  |  Dror 05/01/07
  34.   KUTW: There is a contradiction 14:09  |  Christian 05/01/07
  35.   But In France that is exactly what is asked of Christians 14:51  |  Yaakov Sullivan 05/01/07
  36.   Christian culture # 17 15:11  |  christa 05/01/07
  37.   The children of Abraham 15:27  |  Lena 05/01/07
  38.   silly article 15:34  |  jew 05/01/07
  39.   Understanding of others religion is good. 15:40  |  Albert amato 05/01/07
  40.   I went into a Hindu temple, once... 16:07  |  hanoi 05/01/07
  41.   A little humble lesson for the obnoxious author 1. 16:53  |  zmogus 05/01/07
  42.   C`est La Vie 16:57  |  Victor Smolinsky 05/01/07
  43.   A little humble lesson for the obnoxious author 2. 16:57  |  zmogus 05/01/07
  44.   re:Gouran Z 17:06  |  Engmar Svenson 05/01/07
  45.   A misplaced alarm 17:08  |  Michael N 05/01/07
  46.   how is mass any more religiously beautiful than a synagogue? 17:09  |  SHIMON 05/01/07
  47.   Hallucinating Yitzhak Laor 17:10  |  NB 05/01/07
  48.   xmas mass 17:39  |  charles 05/01/07
  49.   They are not self-hating nor self loathing Jews 17:45  |  Francois 05/01/07
  50.   Looks like this si a job for .... 17:55  |  Trouble 05/01/07
  51.   #26 and #31 18:10  |  Psalm 05/01/07
  52.   A natural phenomenon ridiculously described as "self hate" 18:19  |  Tosefta 05/01/07
  53.   Loar is incorrect and did not research... 18:25  |  Christopher 05/01/07
  54.   "Christian" culture 18:39  |  David Rubin 05/01/07
  55.   Christianization 19:11  |  paul 05/01/07
  56.   Christmas is just to beautiful to ignore it! 19:22  |  bandora 05/01/07
  57.   The european illusion 19:33  |  Jack 05/01/07
  58.   to # 50 trouble 19:35  |  charles 05/01/07
  59.   Don`t even go there #46 19:35  |  Michael N 05/01/07
  60.   34. Christian: a contradiction 19:38  |  KUTW 05/01/07
  61.   A sea change in the way people approach religion 19:39  |  Joseph Zacariah 05/01/07
  62.   Midnight Mass 19:46  |  David 05/01/07
  63.   #54 David Rubin 19:48  |  Chris Linthwaite 05/01/07
  64.   Wow-what a lot of nonsense 19:48  |  Nugget 05/01/07
  65.   KUTW 20:05  |  christa 05/01/07
  66.   Midnight Mass 20:27  |  Nancy 05/01/07
  67.   This is too natural, David and so cannot be tolerated #62 20:33  |  Yaakov Sullivan 05/01/07
  68.   Christ`s Birth 21:00  |  Steven Sawyer 05/01/07
  69.   65. christa 21:16  |  KUTW 05/01/07
  70.   To Missionary Sawyer 21:25  |  bensolomon.info 05/01/07
  71.   isaiah # 68 21:35  |  charles 05/01/07
  72.   Yaacov Sullivan # 67 21:46  |  charles 05/01/07
  73.   What does it make me? 21:53  |  robin 05/01/07
  74.   Charles, please don`t be sorry for me! #71 22:03  |  Yaakov Sullivan 05/01/07
  75.   Christa 22:07  |  Chaval 05/01/07
  76.   Christ is born! 22:10  |  Karam 05/01/07
  77.   They`re ALL Wrong 22:24  |  Rav Harley 05/01/07
  78.   Midnight Mass-#67 22:33  |  Maher 05/01/07
  79.   Christian values 22:33  |  sweis Melbourne 05/01/07
  80.   #70 bensolomon.info 23:16  |  Psalm 05/01/07
  81.   #64 Paul from Austin 23:29  |  David Rubin 05/01/07
  82.   # 71 23:32  |  Psalm 05/01/07
  83.   Response to #79 23:34  |  David Rubin 05/01/07
  84.