Mondoweiss keeps getting better and better in looking deeply at Zionism. Here is a remarkable essay by a Jew returning to Poland. It's followed be even more remarkable responses. All food for thought. At the root of this is the mythology of Zionism. A mythology that often has no base in reality. We shape our mythologies and then our mythologies shape us.

In the beloved Old Country, a Jew has visions of her homeland

"Last month I visited the Old Country for the first time. Poland. Land of my grandmother and grandfather, burial ground of countless unknown relatives. For six days, I wandered the country, and for six days I marinated in a deep nostalgia for a Jewish past I have never lived but have always felt far more connected to than, say, the Zionist-dominated present.

"In one particularly moving episode, I walked the still-cobblestoned street where my grandfather walked as a boy, a narrow lane of Bialystok called Czysta Street where he, his parents, and eight siblings all lived [old homestead is pictured, below].

"In another, I celebrated, cake and all, what would have been my great-grandparents’ 118th wedding anniversary. I visited the synagogue in Tykocin where one of my great grandfathers might have prayed. And I roamed the overgrown cemeteries of Warsaw and Bialystok, wondering which of my relatives were buried there, marveling at the tangled breadth of what once was, mourning its loss, and puzzling over why, if we’re going to insist on having some kind of a “homeland,” so many Jews demand that it be Israel when it so clearly should be Poland. Poland, land of latkes and bialys. Poland shel zahav.

"This, of course, isn’t the reaction you’re “supposed” to have. In the popular Zionist narrative, the Old Country – and the unspeakably murderous brutality that Jews suffered there – is the (non-Biblical) justification for the state of Israel. It’s the narrative stepping-stone that gets people from anti-Semitism to Eretz Yisrael, from colonization to justification, and a whole industry of books, teen tours, and UJA-style delegations has sprouted up to help cement the connection.

"And yet, when I returned from my trip and one of my more Zionist relatives asked the inevitable question – “So now you understand why Jews need Israel, right?” – I still couldn’t say “yes.” For me, the Old Country opened up a very different set of narratives."

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A Polish-Canadian calls for healing between Poles and Jews

"My dearest Jewish friend, Ms. Lizzy Ratner,

"It warmed my heart to hear that your six-day sojourn through Poland’s cities, towns and villages led you to discover the one-thousand-year old history of Polish Jewry and to feel a deep personal attachment to the land of your ancestors which you wrote about in your article “In the Beloved Old Country, a Jew has Visions of her Homeland”.

"I have been returning to Poland the last few years, to the country of my birth, which my family fled from communist persecution. I too feel that deep, inner longing to rediscover and connect to the Jewish half of the Polish soul, or is it the Polish half of the Jewish soul?

"When I visit Poland, I make sure to take in the weeklong Festival of Jewish Culture at the end of June held in the Jewish district of Krakow, capped by thousands upon thousands of Poles crammed into the Old Jewish Square swaying to the best Klezmer music from around the world. Once, when I was employed in Warsaw for a few months, I called-in sick in order to travel to the city of Lodz, to run my fingers across the marvelous red-orange brickwork of the old textile factory owned by the Jewish magnate Izrael Poznanski—the king of cotton. Then onto to his home, the stunning baroque Poznanski Palace, now housing a museum dedicated to the history of Lodz, which resonates in my mind because of a picture of a remarkably cosmopolitan choir in pre-war Poland composed of one third Catholic Poles, one third Jewish Poles, and a third Germans. I took pictures of myself sitting next to the famous pianist Arthur Rubinstein or, rather, the life-sized bronze statue of him playing the piano on Piotrkowska Street. Of course, merriment aside, I also made the obligatory pilgrimage to Auschwitz, as well as Stutthof and Majdanek, to pay my respects to the victims of the German Nazis.

"As long as I can remember, I was fascinated by Polish Jewish culture—the good and the bad. I was an odd boy, in that most of my friends at the Catholic School I attended in Canada read marvel comics and hardy boy novels, while I read Elie Wiesel and letters from Auschwitz. My friends, all Detroit Tigers fans, followed Kirk Gibson and Alan Trammell religiously, and I did too, but I also followed Pope John Paul’s visits to Auschwitz where he knelt and prayed, his visit to the Great Synagogue in Rome, and watched through tears as he placed a prayer in the Wailing Wall in Israel.

"The words he issued commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising still echo in my heart, “As Christians and Jews, following the example of the faith of Abraham, we are called to be a blessing to the world. This is the common task awaiting us. It is therefore necessary for us, Christians and Jews, to be first a blessing to one another”.

"What I am trying to say, is that as a Polish-Catholic raised in a conservative Polish-Catholic home, I was and remain in search of an honest conversation between Poles and Jews, and I have to admit it is disheartening to find time and again the lines of communication between these two storied peoples, sharing a beautiful and tragic one thousand year old history to become, so corroded by anger and beset by a sclerosis due to politics and campaigns of misinformation that perpetuate misunderstanding."

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In this corner, assimilation. In that corner, Zionism

"Reading Lizzy Ratner’s moving account of her visit to the old country prompts me to write.

"One key point I felt was overlooked was the impact of Communism. It was Stalin more than anyone who stood in the way of allowing the surviving Jews of Europe to cast down their buckets, and thus it is indeed telling that he was the earliest endorser at the war’s outset of a Jewish state in Palestine. It is also worth noting in this context that the old country became the site of the greatest bloodbath in the history of mankind: the clash of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht.

"Of course the Zionist obstruction of a Jewish recovery in Europe was a major force as well. Indeed, the much-storied Warsaw Ghetto uprising was effectively the last stand of the Jews who rejected Zionism in favor of an emancipated future in Europe. And the journalist most responsible for telling their story to the world, William Zukerman, was emphatic on this point.

"If there is anyone in whose footsteps Phil Weiss is following, it is William Zukerman. After the founding of the State of Israel, the veteran Yiddish journalist wrote and published the Jewish Newsletter to keep alive the anti-Zionist tradition of the Yiddish-speaking socialist community until his death in 1961. Though apparently remaining an atheist in keeping with this tradition, Zukerman nonetheless cast his lot with the Reform Rabbis of the American Council for Judaism, acknowledging them as "the party of opposition in American Jewry." Significantly, the President of the ACJ, Lessing Rosenwald, distinguished himself as the leading voice in the wilderness urging the rescue and revival of European Jewry against the obstructionist aims of the Zionists."

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Does American Jewish political engagement reflect a shtetl outlook?

"I took Lizzy Ratner’s recent blog, In the beloved Old Country, a Jew has visions of her homeland, to be a satire on Zionism, somewhat in the vein of Swift’s famous "modest proposal." Unfortunately, or perhaps by intent, Lizzy stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest. And yet that may be for the good, because in one of her comments she raises an important question. Conjuring up "Zionists or ultra-religious folk who might happen to be reading this," she says, "they’ll accuse me of the greatest crime of all: of failing to understand the lessons of the Holocaust, of shrugging off centuries of hate."

"And isn’t that the real question? What exactly are the "lessons of the Holocaust?" What lessons have been learned, and are the lessons that were learned those that should have been learned? For Neocons, the obvious lesson is that Jews need a Fortress Israel that they can withdraw to in time of persecution. I have actually had highly-educated and intelligent Jews tell me that–if persecution should arise they can always flee to Israel. Like, if they’re American neighbors start forming into murderous anti-Semitic mobs they’ll somehow be safe crammed cheek by jowl into a tiny Levantine state, in a world awash in nuclear weapons. The Neocon response to this objection, of course, is to enlist the United States in a global search and destroy mission to level any country that expresses hostility to Israel. I submit, without denying the real threats that face Jews, that that is a mistaken lesson, a false lesson."

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