Modern Zionism: Pinsker, Herzl, Weizmann -- and Woodrow Wilson (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

This is the conclusion of the interview posted last week: Zionism As A Reflection of Jewish History - Interview with Alex Ryvchin


Q: You quote a writer describing the attendees at Third Zionist Congress, including “a bearded Persian” and “an Egyptian in a fez.” Did Herzl recognize a need for Zionism among Jews in Arab lands?

Hertzl was the quintessential European. He possessed a rare political genius. He looked at Zionism and the Jewish Question through the prism of Europe -- but he understood that for Zionism to really succeed, it had to capture the imagination of the Jewish world. It had to capture the imagination of the world leaders who could fulfill the mission of Zionism. It would have to be an international movement. He wanted to bring together as many Jewish communities as possible -- even though the majority of his efforts were centered on Europe. The early Zionist Congresses set the tone for the Zionism movement that was universal. It brought together American Jewry and European Jewry and the Jews of the Middle East. and it united them in a common purpose and a common mission.

Q: Usually, we think of Herzl as the father of modern Zionism and of the Jewish state. You describe 3 men as being leading inspirations of the Zionist movement: Leon Pinsker, Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weizmann with each making a different and unique contribution to the development of Zionism. What did each contribute?

There have been many great leaders, thinkers and theorists throughout Jewish history that have sought to unify the Jewish people, but I focused on Pinsker, Herzl and Weizmann, who were very different figures and each in their own way, represent different strands of the Zionist movement.

Leon Pinsker. Public Domain

Pinsker wrote a landmark seminal text, Auto-Emancipation. What was significant about Pinsker is that he came to the question as an Assimilationist. He believed fervently that by becoming fully immersed in the cultural social scientific and political life of Russia, the Jews of Europe could be saved. He believed that the sort of transformations that were happening across Europe that were granting emancipation and civil rights to Jews would eventually come to Russia. But he was rudely shaken out of his belief by the brutality of the pogroms. These did not come about as a result of peasant rage. They were deliberately and strategically incited by the very people Pinsker believed would bring the reform – the leaders, the clerics, the newspaper editors and the lawyers. His book Auto-Emancipation had a scintillating effect on Jewish thought throughout the European continent. But also, he stands for that kind of transformation from assimilation to nationalism.

Herzl's visit to then-Palestine. At dawn on deck as the ship reach
the shores of Jaffa. Public Domain

Herzl was very much his successor in that regard. I spend a lot of time discussing the Dreyfus Affair. It illustrates how extraordinary and unlikely the story of Zionism is. You have the Dreyfus Affair and the story of injustice and you have 34-year-old Herzl there as the Paris correspondent for a Viennese daily newspaper, by chance observing this himself. Herzl was also an Assimilationist, to the extent that he played with the idea of converting to Christianity. He argued that Jews should disappear into the crowd. But then he sees the Dreyfus affair. He sees the public degradation and humiliation of a man who exemplified the qualities of assimilation. He was a soldier, he was civically minded and patriotic. He had given everything to the public and it culminates in his being wrongly convicted, thrown into an island prison. The mob of Frenchmen chanted “Death to Dreyfus” and “Death to Jews” outside the courtroom.

Herzl also brings something else to the story of Zionism – the idealism and the philosophy of Zionism. Pinsker had done that as well, but Herzl then converted it into extraordinary political and diplomatic outcomes in a very short period of time before his premature death. Herzl is intriguing because he shows the need to not only have great views and ideas, but also to be practical and efficient. He had a frenzied appetite for hard work. He had that Romanticism but he could also roll up his sleeves and work tirelessly.

Chaim Weizmann. Public Domain

Then you have Weizmann, who is a different type of Jew altogether. He is sort of part Pinsker and part Herzl. He comes from Russia. He moves across the continent almost the same way that Zionism moved from Russia -- westward. He had been educated in Switzerland and Germany. He ends up in Great Britain where he becomes a lecturer in Organic Chemistry in Manchester. And again, in an extraordinary turn of events, Great Britain finds itself in a position where it is in desperate need of the chemical compound acetone, which when combined with gunpowder reduces the smoke generated by heavy guns in its naval battles with Germany in WWI. You wonder what that has to do with Zionism and the trajectory of the Jewish People. Weizmann is the one who discovered this formula, and through that work, he becomes associated with people like Churchill, Balfour and Lloyd George – the people who had it within their power to grant Jews their National Home. Lloyd George would later write in his memoirs that his conversations with Weizmann at this time were the origins of the Balfour Declaration.

These are 3 major figures who were possessed with a rare political genius, who have an extraordinary capacity for hard work and were able more than anyone else to transform this sort of shapeless journey to go home which the Jews had carried with them for 2,000 years and turn it into a precise political program that could be implemented.

Q: Chaim Weizmann found apparent Zionist-friendly Arab allies in Hussein ibn Ali and his son Amir Faisal -- both of whom apparently accepted the idea of a Jewish state. How did we get from them to someone like the Grand Mufti who allied himself with Hitler and tried to destroy Jews and the Jewish state?

In the context of the post-WWI peacemaking, the Paris peace conference, the treaty of Versailles, the redrawing of the Middle East after the defeat of the Ottoman empire, there were a lot of negotiations between the great powers and the people who had claims to that land. So you had Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, one of which demanded the decolonization and the autonomous development of the liberated colonies of the Ottoman empire – which was basically the Arab world, including Palestine. And then you had the native peoples of that land making claims to that land. And you have the Balfour Declaration, the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, dealmaking and promises (sometimes contradictory), happening.

In that context, Palestine was viewed as a small prize, a sparsely populated backwater, hardly the most sought after part of the Middle East. They were always willing to sacrifice Palestine in pursuit of far greater and grander post-WWI demands. That is why people made agreements with Weizmann and make statements that Jews were native sons of the land and that they should be welcomed back with open arms, that their return will have wonderful economic benefits for the Arab people living there. That is out of a view that can be seen as moderate and tolerant and willing to accept the Jewish claim to Palestine – so that their territorial claims to land elsewhere in the Middle East would be met more rapidly and more easily.

Then from the 1920’s onward, you have the tactical fulfillment of Zionism taking place. You have Jewish migration and Jewish settlement of the land, the establishment of Jewish industry, and enterprises and trade unions and newspapers and universities and wineries and all this – changing the political and economic environment in the land. Some of the Arabs living there felt dislocated and disenfranchised and what was agreed to by the Great Powers and the Arab and Jewish leaders post-WWI did not help. These are people living on the land and see their future slipping away.

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, who would become the grand mufti of Jerusalem, was remarkably skillful – not at soothing people’s concerns and placating them and negotiating and bringing people together, and alleviating violence – he was extremely skilled at raising the temperature, and inciting people to acts of violence to his own political ends. He is the founding father of Political Islam, turning political grievances into a way to rally the whole Arab world to his cause. He is the quintessential example of the unflinching, unerring Arab leader who never negotiates, never takes a backward step, and is absolutely dogged in their anti-Zionism.
He led his people to disaster.

In 1937, the Peel Commission considered how to deal with the issue of Palestine and the competing claims to the land. The Jews were offered a state on merely 4% of the full Mandate Palestine territory and they were willing to accept that. But al-Hussein rejected it out of hand. The Transjordanian leader at the time was the only Arab leader who had the sense to say ‘you have to accept this, otherwise Palestine will pass into Jewish hands whole. But al-Hussein could not take that into his anti-Zionism and his antisemitism – he could not fathom any sort of accommodation with the Jews.

So to explain that shift -- in the beginning, it was driven by Arab self-interest. They were happy to get their 7 states. And the Jews get Palestine.

Emir Faisal wrote a hand-written amendment that his support of the Balfour Declaration for a Jewish state in Palestine is contingent on the Arabs getting their claIms met. But al-Hussein was so set in his anti-Zionism that he could never take that approach.

Q: People are generally aware of President Truman’s support for the establishment of Israel, but US support for a Jewish state goes back to Woodrow Wilson. What role did Wilson play?

Jewish leaders at the time were desperate for Wilson to make some sort of public statement to endorse the Balfour Declaration in 1918 just as the Paris Peace Conference was about to begin and a new path was dawning in the Middle East. He had Jewish acquaintances like Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter and as a result of his own religious Christian background, he had a romantic view of the People of the Book returning to the land from whence they came.

But at the same time, there were forces pushing against that. There were Christian anti-semites urging him not to recognize Jewish national rights. The State Department was hostile to the idea of a Jewish state because of their desire to develop closer economic ties with the Arabs. So just as in the UK, Wilson also found himself torn between his own ideals and the forces trying to compel him against Zionism.

Then there were Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, laying out the conditions for US engagement in WWI. They did not speak about the Jewish people, but they spoke about the autonomous development of the liberated lands of the Ottoman Empire. And that governing principle allowed the Jews to state their claim to what had become Palestine. There was the idea of the development of the native people of the Middle East – and the Jews were certainly one of those native people. And by extension, they had rights that should be recognized and were recognized.

And Wilson actually did make a statement in 1918, a very tepid statement that endorsed the Balfour Declaration, that he was happy that the work of the Balfour Declaration was being implemented, delighted to see the foundation be set for Hebrew University. That was a very important signal to the Jewish World about which side of the issue Woodrow Wilson stood. It was highly significant.

Then at the Paris Peace Conference, the US representatives were very clear in there support for the Balfour Declaration and for the establishment for the Jewish National claim to Palestine.

Wilson played an important role in developing an international consensus about Zionism right around that time.



7. The history of Modern Zionism offers a counterpoint to the perceived passivity of Jews during the Holocaust. How do we explain that in contrast to the heroism of Trumpador and the Jews of the Mule Corp who impressed British officers with their heroism in WWI?

There was a view, both inside and outside the Jewish world that the Jews were led like lambs to the slaughter. In some regards, there were episodes where one could say that the Jews did not cover themselves with glory, that they could have resisted more actively and aggressively. The natural capacity of Jews to resist Nazism, to save themselves, to fight back, was mostly non-existent. And I talk about Raul Hilberg the great Holocaust historian, who spoke about a formulaic response to danger that the Jews had honed over 2,000 years of exile.

Basically, their response was to alleviate their pain, to try to lobby governments, to write op-eds and to try to convince the public that the antisemites were wrong. Once the tide had turned against them, the Jews became wholly passive and submitted completely. But at the same time, we have to realize that the Jews had no real ability to defend themselves against a military power of overwhelming strength with the mission of destroying every last Jewish life, aided by collaborationist governments and police forces and populations in almost every place they entered. Jews were unarmed.

But after the Holocaust, you have the Jews in Palestine seeing what happened to their brethren in Europe and saying this is what can happen to Jews who are weak and vulnerable and unarmed – and we must never allow that to happen to us.
This leads to a sort of rehabilitation of the Jew.

There were events before which had a similar impact. The Holocaust, being on a larger scale, had a bigger impact. The Kishinev pogrom, almost a miniature version of the Holocaust, incited by clerics and policemen and government officials in a terrible massacre of Jews – was followed by stories coming out of rapes and murders, making the Jews feel a sense of vulnerability but also a sense of solidarity with their own people. This invigorated the Jewish people and was turned into a major humanitarian concern. Yet also a sense of shame that this is what Jews had been reduced to.

This created in Zionism a redemptive quality: saving the Jews not only physically, but also spiritually and culturally. If you look at Zionism today, it is about a sense of Jewish pride – not a grotesque chauvinistic pride but rather a simple pride about belonging to a very special remarkable people, of who we Jews really are, and being willing to stand up for that and assert your rights and not fall prostrate in front of your tormentors.

Q: When it comes to the influence of external forces on Zionism and Aliyah, people think of the Holocaust. But you note that the early writings about Zionism as a political movement largely originated in the Russian Empire. Why would Russia have this influence?

By the late 19th century because of progressive migrations as a result of expulsions from Spain and Great Britain, and pogroms in Germany – Jews were moving further and further east. You had shifting borders in that part of the world so that you had more Jews living within the Russian empire than anywhere else. Along with that, you had unsparing brutality generation to generation such as the Chelminsky pogroms.

People look at Israel being a reaction to the Holocaust, but there is a long history and a long continuum that made the Holocaust not only possible, but also inevitable. When people ask how the Holocaust could have happened, the seeds of it can be found in Russia hundreds of years earlier.

Because of the emphasis on the Holocaust we see the view, especially by anti-Zionist activists, the claim that Israel is a burden on the Arabs to atone for European guilt. To assuage the guilt of 6 million killed, a Jewish state is planted in the middle of the Arab world. As if Jews are European interlopers with no claim to the land.

We have Rashida Tlaib with the claim that it warms her heart how the Palestinian Arabs warmly welcomed the Jews of Europe as refugees from the Holocaust. This is a double falsehood because it also claims they welcomed Jews when in fact there were boycotts, violence and strikes at every turn.

The right to a national home in Israel is not only a legal right, but it has also been established in the decades before the Holocaust and it is an existential necessity for the Jewish people.
When we look today at the persecuted and abandoned people of the world, Kurds, Syrians and Uighurs – it shows us what it means to be stateless and manipulated by the self-interest of others.

People like Sarsour are anti-Zionists and in my view antisemites who claim that Zionism is creepy and racist dedicated to negative purposes. But there are a lot of people who see through this and see Zionism as an inspiration.

I’ve seen in my own work, from the Assyrian community in Australia, the Muslims in China, Kurdish leaders. They look at the story of the Jews who have survived through 2,000 years inquisition, pogroms and forced conversions, yet retaining their culture and sense of peoplehood and formed a national movement that is compelling and coherent and actually achieved the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral land.

A lot of these abandoned, persecuted, stateless people are trying to take inspiration from that and are trying to model their own national movements from it.


Q: Before Great Britain became a bitter opponent to Jewish immigration into then-Palestine and successfully cut down the size of the state, there was a time that Great Britain had a romanticized view of Zionism and wanted to help the establishment of a Jewish state. What was that based on?

It came from a number of sources. It came from the Christian beliefs of people like Balfour, Lloyd George and Churchill, that the Jews should have the right to return home. When you compare them to the Christian Zionists of today, you see that it is such a beautiful concept for them. This is not the concept of End of Days or The Second Coming, requiring that Jews be in the land. This is a more benign and beautiful idea, that the Jews are the People of the Book who gave the world Ethical Monotheism. Who gave the Christians their foundation of texts and beliefs. They believed that the Jews who had been harried and persecuted throughout the world should have a national home.

Yes, there are also the realpolitik considerations.

In the early 1900s, there was a concern about a large Jewish refugee problem. This was a unique solution to that.
Another consideration that cannot be discounted is the work of Chaim Weizmann. He was able to captivate and engage everyone. He was a dynamic, magnetic personality. As mentioned earlier, Lloyd George in his memoirs credits his discussions with Weizmann as leading to the Balfour Declaration. The truth of that is open to speculation, but it is clear that Weizmann rendered an extraordinary service to the British and they were grateful.

So it was a combination of the practical and the idealistic.

But what you then have over the next 3 decades, is the change in government, waning idealism and of course much more urgent critical considerations. There is the growing Arab violence in the Middle East and the threats from Arab leaders.

When Trump made the recommendation for the recognition of Jerusalem, we heard about the threat of the burning of the streets of the Middle East, which did not transpire. But those threats were there then – and they are there now.

And the other great factor that changed the calculations and caused the British to overcome their idealism was WWII. During the leadup to WWII, the Balfour Declaration (which came in 1917, at the end of WWI) had come to be seen as a distant relic of the past and irrelevant when the major new threat was Nazism. The concern for the British, and Chamberlain expressed it, was that if we have to offend one side – let it be the Jews. He said that because he wanted the Arabs to be potential allies in the coming European war, which would metastasize the Middle East as WWI had.

This was politics because the Balfour Declaration had been enshrined into international law. Great Britain had a legal duty to bring about a National Home for the Jews, as contained in the covenant of the League of Nations and the San Remo Conference. The Balfour Declaration was not empty words – it was a binding legal promise that had been made.

These were jettisoned because there were more pressing political and economic considerations entering into their calculations.

Oil was also a consideration. Chamberlain made comments about that as well, that the center of gravity of oil production had now shifted to the Middle East. These were very real considerations by Great Britain and the US. The State Department was cognizant of the fact the Middle East was becoming crucial in international affairs. You had the Suez Canal, which was an important gateway. The romanticism and idealism became a secondary consideration.

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Zionism As A Reflection of Jewish History - Interview with Alex Ryvchin (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

An interview with Alex Ryvchin, author of Zionism: The Concise History
(Originally posted on The Jewish Press)

Q: What do you see as the purpose of your new book, Zionism: The Concise History, and who is it for?

A: The whole concept of Zionism has been politically and strategically trashed by her enemies. The danger is that future generations will only know Zionism as an evil to be fought and the young people, whom we count on as the next advocates to tell the story of Zionism and defend it, today are generally apathetic or ignorant of this story. We hear people saying Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism or being Jewish, but I think Zionism is inextricably linked to Jewish history.

The story of Zionism is the story of the Jewish people. And if Jews don’t know that story and don’t take part in it, we will see greater rates of intermarriage and loss of identity.

For this reason, I’d like to see my book taught in schools and universities.

Q: One of the patterns in Jewish history is making questionable alliances with apparent enemies. You mention Herzl in this regard. Can you give an example, and do you think this is an unavoidable element of Zionism?

Herzl dealt with a lot of ardent antisemites like the Kaiser and the Russian Foreign Minister. He felt a cold synergy between the interests of Zionism and these rabid antisemites. Herzl thought that for the Jews to achieve the return to their ancestral land, these antisemites who are so keen to purge their countries of Jews would be accommodating. And indeed, many of them saw a benefit in a movement that could absorb a large number of Jews.

In any political campaign such as Zionism, there has to be a dose of realpolitik--to think not only about the idealism, but also how to practically achieve your goal. That means creating alliances with those you find unsavory. The danger is when you look at an alignment of interests as temporary and mistake that for good faith or long term alliances. To Herzl’s credit, he quickly realized he was not going to achieve the goals of Zionism through alliances with those who were fundamentally hostile to Jewish rights. That is why he shifted the Zionist movement from the European continent to Great Britain, where he found men who more driven by Christian ideals and a general passion for the idea of the Jews returning to their ancestral land.

Today, Israel has formed alliances with some nations that might really see a short term alignment of interests, but don’t harbor any great feeling of warmth towards the Jewish people. That is dangerous, but it is also the world that we live in. And as long as the Netanyahu government and the successive governments go into this with their eyes open, I think it is something that can and needs to be done. But at the same time, I think that Israel should act morally in this regard and call out antisemitism of far-right leaders around the world with whom they may have diplomatic relations. If those relations are genuine,  they will withstand those criticisms.

Q: We know the Balfour Declaration favors the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine and that  “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” -- but it also says nothing should be done to prejudice “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” What was that issue?

A: The concern was that Zionism was not the universal position of the Jewish World. There was still discussion in the Jewish World what was best way to alleviate the suffering of the Jews was through assimilation. Not everyone was on the side of Zionism, particularly those who lived in liberal Democratic countries like the UK, Australia and the US. They did not see the need for a national movement to return to Palestine. They favored assimilation.

In order to assuage those concerns, that wording was put in, to say that basically, those Jews who preferred to live outside of the Jewish State would continue to live in the Diaspora with nothing to impede their rights. There was a concern that once the Jewish State was formed, Jews living outside that state would be viewed as alien, foreigners. That language in the Balfour Declaration was to protect them.

I am keen that people should read this book and apply its lessons to contemporary times. I think that is very important.

Bernie Sanders is different from those Jews in the early 20th century who were driven mainly by self-preservation. They were men who, despite being Jewish, soared to the heights of public life in the UK and Australia. They looked at Zionism, dedicated to liberating the Jewish people and alleviating their antisemitism and thought: what do I need this for; it will only have a detrimental effect on my standing!
Sanders is not motivated by that sort of calculus. He is an American Jew, deeply committed to perfecting American society, making it as just and equitable as possible the way he sees it. I think he views Zionism as a foreign project and doesn’t identify with it. Also, he is associated with the hard left who are rabidly anti-Zionist and has to placate them.

Alex Ryvchin, author of Zionism: The Concise History. Source: Screen-cap

Q: Originally, Arab leaders like Hussein ibn Ali and his son Amir Faisal allied with Chaim Weizmann and favored the re-establishment of a Jewish state. Then along came Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti, who incited riots and tried to prevent it. Today, are we seeing a shift back in the other direction?

A: Today the Arab states see the peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and Jordan. They see if you don’t threaten Israel, it won’t harm you back, will be good friends and share technology. Israel can become a dependable strategic ally in the face of much bigger threats like Iran.

But at the same time, one thing that Zionism teaches us is that alliances come and go, they rise and fall, and cannot really be depended on. They need to be used at that point in time. As long as Israel is economically, militarily, and diplomatically strong, that is the most important thing. Let Israel choose alliances at that point in time, but it cannot depend on anyone.

Q: In the last chapter of your book, you discuss anti-Zionism, which started off as Jewish opposition to Zionism. How is that different from today’s anti-Zionism on college campuses and expressed by politicians?

A: Early anti-Zionism is virtually unrecognizable from anti-Zionism today. The anti-Zionist Jews at the time were overwhelming loyal, proud Jews who cared deeply for the future of the Jewish people, but they had a different view on how to solve the problem of antisemitism in the streets. Their solution was the full immersion into the societies in which they lived. It was a legitimate point of view, but ultimately disproven.

The anti-Zionist Jews of today do not care about Jewish rights. Instead, they use their Jewishness to attack their own people. Rather than stand up against their oppressors, they side with them.

But once the state of Israel exists, anti-Zionism becomes not merely a different political position or philosophy, it now becomes the opposition to the existence of the state of Israel--a state that has now existed for over 70 years. Anti-Zionism is no longer a morally tenable position. That is why you will not find in the ranks of anti-Zionist Jews someone who cares about the future of the Jewish people. Instead, overwhelmingly you find selfish people of low character.

Q: You trace Great Britain’s change into an enemy of Zionism to its being a declining imperial power, stretched thin and wearied by Palestine. Some might see that as a description of the US. Do you think there is a danger of Zionist history repeating itself here too?

A: I think so. That description of Great Britain in the 1940s could apply to the US today. There is a growing trend, particularly under the current president, of isolationism and rethinking US foreign policy solely in terms of US interests. It is no longer fashionable to think the US should bring the values of democracy to the darkest places in the world and be a force for good.

There especially a risk with the progressive Democrats who don't have that instinctive warmth for the state of Israel as establishment Democrats have in the past.

Governments and allies come and go. Israel needs to remain strong and independent to preserve its interests. We have seen this already in the course of its existence.

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Richard Landes: The Man Who Gave Pallywood a Name (Judean Rose)

Professor Richard Landes, being an original thinker, has many new terms, or at least they are new to me. "Demotic." "Cogwar." But I particularly love the concept Richard Landes describes as “Hopium” where hope, in the form of the coming of the messiah, acts as an opiate to dull the pain of the struggle to live in a harsh and sometimes unforgiving world. The idea is striking as an accurate description of the need for the belief in the messiah, separate from whether or not he is actually on the way.

There’s one term, however, that has become a part of the lexicon of every serious observer of the media’s war on Israel and that is “Pallywood.” This term, too, originated with Richard Landes, referring to photos, footage and news coverage staged to make Israel look bad. Pallywood, as a concept, way predates “fake news.” And it was that term and its underlying concept that made Richard Landes a household name for those of us in the trenches defending Israel.

Richard Landes

When I thought of whom I wanted to interview next, Richard came to mind not only because he is interesting, but because I had a hunch he’d say yes, because he’s so approachable. I know that if I comment on one of his papers, he will respond, even though I’m not a scholar or a professor. To my mind, this is the way the internet was meant to be: people with like interests who would otherwise never meet, can find each other online to discuss important and serious concepts.

Not only did Richard Landes agree to be interviewed, but he informed me in a subsequent progress report that he was maybe having “too much fun” answering my questions. Which is when I knew he was going to be giving me interview gold. Which is exactly what I got.  Because Richard Landes is not just interesting and approachable, but generous with his thoughts and time, as will become clear in the scope and breadth of this in-depth interview.

Without further ado, I give you Richard Landes:

Varda Epstein: Where did you grow up? Can you tell us about your parents, and further back, about your family roots? What is your earliest memory?

Richard Landes: I was born in Paris as my father was researching his thesis on the Industrial Revolution. My family left France soon thereafter, though I spent about seven of my first 25 years in that country. I was otherwise in the US, from age 3-7 in Westchester County, then in Palo Alto, California from age 7-8, in Berkeley from age 9-14, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts from age 15-21.

My father’s family came to the United States in the early 20th century from Romania. My great grandfather was a merchant, he sold dry goods and developed supermarkets in Baltimore; my grandfather was a contractor, building skyscrapers in New York City; and my father was a professor and an economic historian at Harvard.

My father wrote several books, among them “The Unbound Prometheus,” “Revolution in Time,” “Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” and “Dynasties,” all about the marvels of Western technology. I grew up with the question “Why the West?” today considered politically incorrect, since it acknowledges that the West has accomplished something no other culture has done, and therefore prompts inferiority feelings of others.

My mother’s family was from Tarnopol, in Russia. They were fur traders, though my maternal grandfather was in real estate. My mother was an English teacher and the author of a series on teaching children’s literature published with BookWise. She also wrote “Pariswalks” with my sister the year they were in Paris in 1973-1974, and I was in the Pyrenees.

My earliest memory is of falling into the swimming pool on the Queen Mary and seeing someone dive in to catch me when I was three years old.

Varda Epstein: Your specialty is millennialism. What is the significance of the belief in the coming of a messianic age to the Jewish people? Imagine if you will, Jews without a belief in the coming of the Messiah. How would we be different without that belief?

Richard Landes: Millennialism, or the belief in a coming Golden Age of peace, plenty and happiness on earth (also known as the messianic era) is, in my understanding, one of the most powerful drives in history. It can lay dormant for years or even decades, but generally bursts out into full-fledged apocalyptic movements (“Now is the time!”), every generation or so. The egalitarian strands (what I call “demotic” or “of the people”), are the driving force behind modernity, and a key element in Jewish survival over the millennia.

Millennialism is an outrageous hope that makes working for a better world possible, despite all the disappointments of life. The belief in messianic era can be an addiction – hopium – and lead to really stupid decisions, for instance sticking with the Oslo Process long after it became clear it was in actuality a war process. Or like today’s Progressives allying with the Caliphaters.

But millennialism/messianism is like fire: at the right temperatures, it is life-giving, but at the wrong temperatures, too much or too little heat, it can cause massive destruction. My book, Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience,” traces the paths of some of the most spectacular apocalyptic movements (i.e. movements of people who think, like the Caliphaters, that the cosmic transformation is happening now!).
I don’t think it’s possible to imagine the Jews without messianism, just as I don’t think it’s possible to imagine either Christianity or Islam, both born in apocalyptic times, without messianism, with all three religions renewing imminent expectation generation after generation. I run across some raised eyebrows when pressed to say whether I believe a messiah will come, and I claim that my mother taught me that “if he didn’t come during the Holocaust, he ain’t coming.” As far as I’m concerned, we’re on our own with all the tools we need. We just need to use them wisely.

I guess I’m part of an unknown number of people who can appreciate the value of messianic thinking and not partake of it, a little like Odysseus and the sirens. Hitler strapped me to the mast. I don’t expect the messiah.

Israel as a state, on the other hand, could not have been built without the messianic hope that the great and moral effort would result in our coming to our homeland free and in peace. Whether secular (Plough Women) or religious (Rav Kook), the messianic Zionist currents constantly met, crossed, reinforced, and struggled against each other. Zionism, in fact, is the only egalitarian millennial movement that has taken power and not, under the blows of hostile neighbors, turned to megadeath and totalitarian coercion (examples of this include the French Revolutionary “terror”, the Soviets, the Nazis, and the Jihadis, among others.) Indeed, Israel’s continuing commitment to democratic principles for over 70 years of constant threat stands as a unique achievement. (The United States, in its early years, managed to overcome the same authoritarian paranoid tendencies as in the examples mentioned above, although under a much lower level of threat.)

Varda Epstein: Were you ever targeted on campus, for your stance on Israel? How has the climate on campuses all over America changed for Jewish students? What should we be doing to fight back?

Richard Landes: I wasn’t targeted, as far as I know, and certainly not openly as what happened to Andrew Pessin at Connecticut College in 2015, the year I retired. But I did become isolated. People didn’t want to hear me defend or discuss Israel. I remember showing “Pallywood” to a colleague in the history dept. He said to me, “I don’t know if you realize this, but I’ve become a liberal,” by which he basically meant, “I won’t acknowledge your evidence, discuss your analysis, or give you a platform.”

Pallywood: "According to Palestinian Sources" from Al Durah Project on Vimeo.

Another colleague, the one with whom, of all my colleagues, I had had the most interesting intellectual discussions, noted how pale I looked one day in the winter of 2002. “It’s all these suicide bombings,” I said.

“Yeah, what choice do they have,” he responded without missing a beat.

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach.

“You have heard of Oslo?” I said.

“Oh yes, that,” he responded, as if the Palestinians had not just chosen war.

I only later identified the revolting phenomenon of “humanitarian racism” in assuming Palestinians incapable of any moral responsibility, and the transferring all of that responsibility instead to Israel: “You give them no choice but to teach their children to want to kill themselves trying to kill your children.”

And it’s not only this man, this colleague, per se. We’d never before discussed the Middle East that I can recall. He must have heard this idea of Palestinian Arabs having “no choice” from others, and when they had said it, everyone around had nodded, so he assumed it to be true. I wrote a response, a letter, which later became this essay. He never really responded.

I didn’t fully understand this at the time it was happening, but 2000 was an historical turning point. As far back as the 1980s, with its anti-Orientalism stance, academic standards for handling empirical evidence, and thinking with any humane moral consistency about the conflict in the land between the river and the sea had already taken a sharp downturn. But by and large, the larger culture had resisted: public figures, policy-makers, mainstream journalists, even most academics had remained reasonably sympathetic to, and willing to take into account the Zionist narrative, especially when the empirical evidence so strongly supported it.

In 2000, with the outbreak of the Intifada, the post-colonial voice took over. This was evident from the way journalists reported and progressive voices interpreted that event. The anti-Zionists began to shout accusations – Nazis – while those sympathetic to Israel fell silent.

By 2002, a strident anti-Zionist narrative dominated whole areas of the public sphere, from classroom to coffeehouse to dinner-table conversation and opinion pieces. As for the previous, seemingly solid support for Israel, it had collapsed. By 2003, at the height of the suicide terror jihad that increasingly targeted the West, you couldn’t be a Western Liberal if you weren’t pro-Palestinian.

We Zionist sympathizers, on campus, in scholarship, and in journalism, resembled the guy in the samurai movie after his opponent ducks under his blow – he stands stock still, then there is a trickle of blood across his shins, and finally his body falls away from his severed feet. The current craziness on campuses is the result of the spread of that mentality from academia to the journalists and on to the global Progressive movement in tandem with the impotence of the Zionist response. And all of that went mainstream in 2000. In fact, the global progressive protest in Seattle held the previous year, in 1999, did not even raise the Palestinian issue.

Varda Epstein: You are credited with coining the term “Pallywood.” How would you define the term? When and how did you become aware of the phenomenon?

Richard Landes with his film, "Pallywood."

Richard Landes: I coined it as I walked out of the office of France2 TV on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, on October 31, 2003. I had just reviewed the TV footage shot by Talal abu Rahmah, a France2 cameraman, who had persuaded Charles Enderlin to run his video and story of the IDF targeting and killing a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in the arms of his father. This was an event I considered a global cognitive earthquake, and from the Jihadi perspective, a nuclear bomb in the cognitive war (cogwar) against the West.

The video I saw, which Enderlin refused to release, and showed only to vetted friends (I got vetted by a colleague), was nothing but kids standing around, unafraid of the Israelis, and trying to provoke them. These scenes were punctuated by extraordinary staged footage of Palestinians being “shot” by Israelis, then taken by half a dozen men and thrown into an ambulance (more Palestinian suffering at the hands of IDF), followed by more fake fighting scenes (Palestinian David takes on Israeli Goliath).

Violent "injured" evacuation

At one point, it got so silly that Enderlin’s Israeli cameraman who was watching with us, snorted. “Why do you laugh?” I asked.

“Because it’s so obviously staged.”

“I know,” I said, turning to Enderlin, who had used the footage of this photographer to tell his explosive story.

“Oh yeah,” said he in a burst of unconscious Orientalism, “They do it all the time. It’s a cultural thing.”

“So why couldn’t Al Durah be staged?” I asked.

“Oh, they couldn’t fool me,” said Enderlin.

Muhammad al Durah, after he's supposed to be dead, looking at the camera in a scene cut by Enderlin.

As I walked out of the office, I realized that not only do the Palestinian cameramen stage these things all the time, but Western journalists had no problem with this. The other shoe had dropped. It was not just the Palestinians who used Western camera equipment to stage their war propaganda, but the mainstream news media, who rummaged through the junk looking for the most believable sight-bytes to accompany reports on events. It’s not a pick-up game, I thought, it’s an industry… it’s Pallywood. That’s what blew my mind and seemed incomprehensible to so many people outside of Israel – and even to some Israelis: that the media could so violate its own most basic principles.

Journalists, I suddenly realized, weren’t looking for what had actually happened, but for believable footage to illustrate the Palestinian narrative that they had now formally adopted: the narrative that runs somewhere between the Palestinian David versus the Israeli Goliath of the mainstream news media (CNN, BBC, the New York Times) and the Israeli Nazi versus the Palestinian Jew-victim of advocacy journalism (the Nation, the Guardian, Open Democracy). And that narrative, which increasingly overtook the Western public sphere in the aughts (‘00s) and teens, began with Al Durah in 2000, and continues with the current weaponization of BDS on campus.

Varda Epstein: Why do you call your blog “Augean Stables?”

Richard Landes: I realized that Enderlin and his colleagues (the journalists who bring the news of what’s happening here in Israel), had developed atrocious habits, accepting staged footage from their cameramen, and then using the best parts to tell their story to viewers back home. Indeed, the encrustation of bad habits, both empirical and moral, involved in adopting the Palestinian narrative as news and dismissing Israeli counter-claims or counter-evidence as propaganda, struck me as the modern (free) journalist’s version of the Augean Stables: layer upon layer of bad choices, and bad reporting, never corrected, never changed, which had led to an edifice that literally stank globally of accumulated layers of bullshit. And of course, as Heracles cleaned out the stables in a day by running a river through them, I thought the internet would become that river, the one that could sweep away those atrocious habits.

I was, of course, wrong. Lethal journalism is still as strong and as self-destructive as ever. In fact, that brand of lethal journalism has spread. The first “fake news” of the 21^st century was the reporting of the Western press of what was happening here in Israel. It was widespread and sustained (think Jenin in 2002, Lebanon in 2006, and so forth) and it fundamentally disoriented Western thinkers into mistaking the first Jihadi attack on a democracy in the new century, one that pioneered the apocalyptic weapon of suicide terror, for a bunch of “freedom fighters” fighting an evil empire. In 2002, reports of an Israeli massacre at Jenin had Spanish models wear nothing but mock suicide belts to show their solidarity with their Jihadi enemies, celebrating mass-murderous attacks on civilians in (by far) the most progressive culture in the Middle East. It was a massive victory in the cognitive war Caliphaters are so effectively waging against the West.

I’m beginning to wonder if the cleaning out of the stables will happen in time to stop what these bad habits continuously empower, namely people who indeed want to burn down the free news media’s stables, now highly explosive with accumulated fertilizer. Perhaps cyberspace is not a river, but an electric current.

Varda Epstein: Tell us about your Aliyah. When did you know you would make Aliyah? Why did you make Aliyah? Any regrets?

Richard Landes: I came here as an 18 year-old, weeks after the 1967 war was over, and again for a year after the Yom Kippur war, and once more with family in 1994-5. And I always thought of staying, telling myself I’d eventually come back.

In 2004, while here working on the Al Durah Pallywood documentaries, I met Esther Sha’anan (thanks to Tova Weinberg of “Saw You at Sinai” fame). Esther had told Tova she wouldn’t marry someone who wasn’t going to live in the Land. Tova, without knowing she was right, told Esther I was planning to make Aliyah.

We were married in 2005; I polluted the skies with my trips to Israel over the next ten years, then, with a sigh of relief, left Boston University and the Western academic scene in 2015. I think I made Aliyah formally in 2009. At that point it was just a question of working with Nefesh b’Nefesh. I’m somewhat ashamed it took me so long to finally do it.

Varda Epstein: Do you think the “fake news” phenomenon is real? Is it recent? A resurgence of an old problem?

Richard Landes: I’d say it’s very bad, indeed, when you look at what’s happening to democracies around the world, whether political insanity (Labour, Progressive Democrats, Trump) or an inevitable self-protective move to the “right” (Right-wing parties), reacting to the suicidal “cosmopolitanism” of the political and information elites who consider it a sacred duty in honor of the Holocaust to bring in waves of Jew-hating Muslims and spread them over Europe.

Now we swim in fake news that has taken over even the mainstream news media. Venerable brands are predictable only in the narratives they pitch. This level of sloppiness and disregard for the basic principles of modern journalism (also known as “post-modern advocacy journalism”) that we see everywhere from our information professionals, began at the Middle East desks of our major news outlets. Such outlets include, for instance, the BBC, CNN, France2, the New York Times, Le Monde, and Haaretz, with their coverage of the “Al Aqsa Intifada” or what we might be better understood if we called it the “Oslo Jihad,” or the opening round of the global Jihad against democracies.

Fake news is, of course, an old problem. One can even argue that modern, free, reasonable, accurate journalism is the appearance of an island of news in a sea of fake news. In time of war, the problem becomes especially acute. Historically the danger was “patriotic war journalism” that reported its own side’s war propaganda as news (e.g., the way Hearst and Pulitzer started the Spanish war for Teddy Roosevelt). It was a high moral and professional aspiration to have the media skeptical enough to resist their own side’s war propaganda.

Pallywood is a form of “partisan war journalism,” in which outside reporters take sides in a conflict and report that side’s propaganda as news. That’s how the Oslo Jihad was reported. But what the 21^st century has wrought that is, I think, unique, is “own-goal war journalism,” in which the post-modern journalists report their enemy’s – Caliphater – war propaganda as news. Hence, the reported massacre at Jenin inspires infidels to cheer on apocalyptic, suicidal Jihadis as they attack a democratic society. Hence, the increasing and increasingly dysfunctional fissure in Western democracies between journalists and the increasingly restive and pained citizenry they are trying to manipulate into peaceful choices. On some level our social body has contracted a kind of CIPA (congenital insensitivity to pain) in which the nerves/information professionals do not deliver to the brain/public sphere the news of where it hurts and who did it.

Results of own-goal journalism: identifying with your enemy, London 2009

Varda Epstein: What can regular people do to combat media bias? How far should we go to punish biased outlets? Should we avoid reading the content of anti-Israel publications? What outlets do you trust for hard news about Israel? 

Richard Landes: On the grand scale, we need to initiate and participate in the establishment of reliable websites (like Snopes used to be), that people can go to for a trustworthy escape from fake news. This is an enormous endeavor, but in an age of information excess and collapse of reliability, it should have a very high value… cognitive anchors, if you will. These shouldn’t be Jewish or uniquely Jewish-themed, but collective efforts to make a free, productive, self-correcting society possible by providing a cleaning process that strips away fake news – a kind of information dialysis.

On a more individual level, I think it helps to realize that the problem is systemic, that fighting the details, however important – and thank God for sites like CAMERA, HonestReporting, and UK Media Watch, there should be many more – is not going to turn the tide. The height and depth of the failure of information professionals in the 21^st century is hard to imagine, partly because they’ve convinced themselves they’re doing a good job. (The Augean Stables smell just fine to them.)

And this is no longer just a problem over here (the Land of Israel) and not there (the West). It’s metastasizing. BDS is a symptom; it can only succeed because both media and academia have succumbed to the replacement narrative of Palestinians suffering genocide at the hands of the Zionists. In the process, they have betrayed the ethical demands of their profession.

What this means for how you speak with people who don’t understand what’s going on, really depends on the individuals who are interacting. But the orienting principle to articulate is that anti-Zionism is an attack not just on autonomous Jews but on the Western progressive world and on democracies: lands to which a majority of the rest of the world’s inhabitants would love to emigrate. The West’s susceptibility to lethal journalism about Israel is the soft underbelly whereby Caliphaters can infiltrate the Western progressive world and implement their authoritarian vision. When you can’t be a Progressive and a Zionist on campus, the Caliphaters have won their fight to turn infidels into useful idiots (think Linda Sarsour).

At least for now, BDS damages academia much more than it damages Israel, which continues to thrive. Real scholarship, meantime, high professional standards for the gathering and analyzing of data, especially where the Middle East is concerned, continues to degrade dramatically. Today, it’s extremely difficult for anyone in college to be exposed to the narrative that Israel represents the future of progressive politics, including feminism, in this crazy neighborhood. And yet, as my kids used to say, it’s a “no duh.”

Humor helps. I think we need to develop truly telling and penetrating jokes about the idiocy of the current acamediacracy. It’s a bit beyond my skill set. Caroline Glick had a great comedy group going about a decade ago. Latma. Maybe it made too much fun of our cousins and not enough of the insane “global progressive left.” We need some good comedians to write us some one-liners.

Ultimately, if we make our way out of this, it’ll be because people who have been too timid till now, at least play nice cop to some Zionist’s tough cop. When the thought police yell “Islamophobe” and “racist” and “blaming the victim,” any time people start to describe some of the less savory elements of the Arab and Muslim world, the (until now, largely silent) bystander needs to intervene and explain how what’s being said needs to be listened to and considered and not driven from the public sphere. That’s especially important on campuses. The reason the other side is so vociferous and morally agitated is because if they let us speak and our audience were fair-minded, they would lose.

Varda Epstein: What did you think about Israel applying its No Entry law to Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar? Who won? What is the ultimate goal of these people, from your perspective?

Richard Landes: It was a win-win for them. The way they set it up, whatever Israel did, we lost and Tlaib-Omar won. They’re both Caliphaters, vying for top spot in the American cogwar. It was a major victory for them to make it into Congress, and for Omar to win a place on the Foreign Relations Committee. It was, of course, majorly stupid of both voters and the democratic congresspeople who put her there. But, alas, virtue signalers would rather shoot themselves in various body parts than give the appearance of being prejudiced.

Saying the two could come to Israel, long before they made a formal request with a written agenda, was a big mistake. (We may have been virtue-signaling about how open we are.) We jumped the gun there. I wanted to put up a site welcoming them, and that would serve to, among other things, fact-check their statements while here. I still think that site should be prepared.

Another lesson learned from this incident: don’t wait for them to put us in a corner. Start thinking aggressively and not defensively. Israeli spokespeople have an unfortunate tendency to consider a draw or not too big a disaster, a victory of sorts, and don’t follow through when they have the upper hand. It’s a modified form of battered-wife syndrome, especially as we’ve seen it since the beginning of 2000. I don’t think we’ve won a single mivtza, a military operation, in the cogwar as yet. I think we need to amend the prayer for the IDF. ביבשה באוויר בים ובתקשורת*

Part of the problem is we don’t realize how much ground we’ve lost in the last 20 years. We think people agree with us when it comes to reality. Most Zionists think most people understand that Jenin was a massive episode of fake-news lethal journalism. Most outsiders, though, old enough to remember, think the reporting might have been exaggerated at the time, but was more or less accurate along the main lines. And so it has been with every subsequent story of Palestinian suffering, right down to the recent reporting on the weekly “Border March,” a euphemism for violent, staged protests.

Figuring out how to get out of this hole we’re in calls for deep and long-term (though urgent) thinking. Not “how can I (temporarily) move the needle for my donor?” but a serious dedication of funds (a couple of fighter jets’ worth), strategy, and tactics with which we might fight a cognitive war, not just for Israel, but for any democracy that wants to remain free and productive.

Varda Epstein: What is the main lesson we learn from history?

Richard Landes: That it’s those who fail to learn the right lessons who are fated to repeat the wrong decisions. Like the “woke left” of today, that is still unable to absorb the lessons of the millennial madnesses of the 20^th century like communism and Nazism, and is about to repeat the madness by allying with and empowering a terrifyingly destructive millennial movement (the Caliphaters), endorsing them as carriers of a redemptive message.

Solidarity with the most ambitious and ferocious imperialist movement on the planet, Denver Democratic National Convention, 2008. 

As I mentioned, I grew up with the question “Why the West?” – and my answer is, above all, the ability to absorb criticism and learn from it. It’s the major difference between an honor-shame culture and an integrity-guilt culture. In the former, public admission of wrongdoing or failure is a shameful sign of weakness and hurts your standing in others’ eyes. In the latter, it’s a way of both maintaining integrity and learning from mistakes. One dynamic favors a culture of consensus, the other a culture of dispute. The integrity-guilt culture is why the West is so spectacularly successful in all kinds of technology and learning, and why the Jews are so successful in the modern West.

Self-criticism is very hard, and many people spend most of their emotional energy defending their honor or image in others’ eyes (lethal journalists). They invest a great deal of time anticipating and imagining attacks. The learning curve of the 21^st century Western “intelligentsia” (the people who have a large impact on the conversation in our public sphere), has been lamentably low.

We need a generation of all ages that can learn from and give criticism effectively. But for that we need to quiet the moral hysteria – indignant cries of “Islamophobia,” “white supremacism,” “racism,” “hate-speech,” and even “antisemitism” – so we can listen and be listened to, and respond in a thoughtful manner.

* On land, in the air, at sea, and in the news media

***

Read more Judean Rose interviews:

Genie Milgrom: “I Could Just Feel my Grandmothers Through the Papers”

Phyllis Chesler: The Radical Feminist Who Refuses Your Intersectional Anti-Israel Slot

Otzma Yehudit’s Dr Adva Biton: Finding Strength to Fight for Others

Ryan Bellerose: Indigenous Has Nothing to Do with Time and Everything to Do with Connection

Akiva Fuld: “I’m Doing This For Me”

 A Father Speaks Out: The Murder of Malki Roth and the Refusal of Jordan to Extradite the Beast Ahlam Tamimi (Arnold Roth)

Israel's Jewish Indigenous Land Rights: A Conversation with Nan Greer, Part 1

Israel's Jewish Indigenous Land Rights: A Conversation with Nan Greer, Part 2

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Genie Milgrom: “I Could Just Feel my Grandmothers Through the Papers” (Judean Rose)

Genie Milgrom, 63, always felt uncomfortable in the Roman Catholic milieu in which she was raised. She seemed to gravitate to the Jewish kids, all the way back to summer camp, the year she was seven. As time went on, she found she was thirsty to learn more about Judaism, and finally, at 35, she converted with an orthodox Beit Din. Then, a series of events led Milgrom to the realization that she was one more in a long line of crypto-Jews, and she had the documents to prove it.

Here is the shortened form of her story: Milgrom’s grandmother died on a Friday, and the funeral was held the next day. That meant Genie, as an orthodox, Sabbath-observant Jew, could not attend. Upset, she asked her mother why they couldn’t delay the funeral to the following day, a Sunday, so that she might attend. Her mother explained that it was family custom to bury relatives immediately, and that set the wheels in Genie’s mind turning. It was not a Catholic, but a Jewish custom to bury relatives as soon as possible.

Then, the day after the funeral, Genie’s mother handed her a box that her grandmother had specified be delivered upon her death. In the box were a Star of David earring and a hamsa pendant, the symbol of a hand used by Sephardic Jews to ward off the evil eye. Genie thought of some of the odd customs of her grandmother, like checking eggs for blood, or burning a bit of the dough when she made bread or cake. A light went on and she knew the truth: her grandmother must have been a secret Jew, what used to be called a Marrano and is today called a converso or crypto-Jew.

Genie began a search for her roots that culminated in the discovery that her maternal grandmothers had all been crypto-Jews going all the way back to the Inquisition: for a grand total of 15 documented, crypto-Jewish grandmothers. That’s when Genie decided to visit a rabbi. She wanted to be declared Jewish from birth. After all, she’d always felt Jewish. And now she knew it was because she was Jewish. Had been Jewish all along.

Genie's great great great grandmother was the great great grandmother to both her grandparents who were cousins

It took many more years of research and documentation but at last Genie had everything she’d been told she needed to be declared Jewish from birth by a prominent rabbinical court in Israel. Including the fact that she had now documented 22 grandmothers of straight matrilineal Jewish descent! “It took them two and a half years to translate everything from medieval Spanish and Portuguese to Hebrew,” Genie said, “but in the end, I got a beautiful letter saying that, while I came to Judaism one way, through conversion, I was in fact born Jewish.”

The letter Genie received included the phrase, “God works in mysterious ways.”

The cover of Genie's cookbook Recipes of My 15 Grandmothers is a compilation of photos of her mother, maternal grandmother, great grandmothers, and great great grandmothers

Genie wrote up her story in My 15 Grandmothers, and has now written a cookbook based on family recipes, Recipes of My 15 Grandmothers: Unique Recipes and Stories from the Times of the Crypto-Jews during the Spanish Inquisition. Never idle, today Genie travels around the world, talking about her experiences and raising awareness of the bnei anusim. I spoke with Genie to learn more about her life and her work:

Varda Epstein: You always felt you didn’t fit into the Roman Catholic world in which you were raised. And you always gravitated to Jewish friends and were thirsty to learn about their customs. Eventually, you converted only to subsequently discover your genealogy of 15 Jewish grandmothers. I think I understand, but can you tell me in your own words why was it so important for you to be declared a Jew from birth?

Genie Milgrom:  The reasons vary. Initially it was important so that I could validate all the feelings I had as a child that didn’t make sense. Then it was because I had such joy in being Jewish and I had not converted my children: I wanted that they should also be part of my ancestry. Finally, and still today, it was to prove that it can be done, so that all the bnei anusim* that are struggling to return only with documents and no conversion, could know that it is totally possible.

Varda Epstein: Was your desire to be declared Jewish difficult to explain to Jews of other streams, who may not accept the concept of matrilineal Jewish descent? I once met a converso who resisted conversion, feeling that she was “Jewish enough.”

Genie Milgrom: Yes, I do get those quizzical looks still today, but most people at the end of the day understand that to make aliyah or be married in Israel, given the religious climate there, it must be done this way. People in tune to the politics about this in Israel understand this much more.

Varda Epstein: Okay, so I’m kind of fascinated with the whole thing of you’re wanting to be declared Jewish from birth. How much of your intuition about your Jewish background do you credit to your Sephardi heritage? Is intuition more of a Sephardi characteristic, do you think? Did all the women in your family have intuition?

Genie Milgrom: Yes, all the women in my family are tuned in to each other. At least for sure my maternal grandmom, mom, sister, me, and my daughter. We know what the other is thinking, we understand intuitively what is going on with each other, we work on the same types of projects at the same time without the other knowing. Scientists now say there is genetic memory in our DNA. I believe this to be true, one-hundred percent.

Varda Epstein: Your new book, Recipes of My 15 Grandmothers, sounds like it is as much a history as a cookbook, reflecting your crypto-Jewish heritage. Can you tell us about some of the recipes that give a hint to a family that was hiding its Jewish heritage?

Genie Milgrom: The recipes, you could tell, spanned many grandmothers. The papers were thinner and with pencil-markings, others already with pen, and some newer ones from the 1900s, were typed. They were all stained and I could just feel my grandmothers through the papers.

I have a fake pork chop recipe made of bread and sugar and milk and we have histories that tell us that the crypto-Jews would throw a real pork chop into the fire to make believe they were eating pork! 

Chuletas (imitation pork chops)

There was a cake called Bollo Maimon (Maimon's cake) eaten at that time, which evokes the name of Maimonides, the great Jewish scholar. Meat and milk were never mixed. There were several recipes for cakes made with cornstarch or potato starch, which would be suitable for Passover.

Bollo Maimon (Maimon's Cake)

Bollo Maimon

A light and fluffy Bundt cake that is both kosher for Passover and parve.

Genie says: “My grandmother always told me this was a recipe from Salamanca, a large city a bit south of Fermoselle, and an hour and a quarter drive. These are still all Spanish recipes but I find it interesting that my grandmother made the distinction that this particular recipe was NOT from Fermoselle.

“I find this to be an unusual recipe in that it can be used for Passover because there is no flour. My grandmother also told me that it could be eaten after any meal. I did not understand at the time but that means that the recipe is parve and not dairy, as the Jewish dietary laws do not allow milk to be eaten after a meat meal.

“This may well have been one of the original Sephardic cakes. The name of the famous Jewish Sage, Maimonides, was Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon. Is there a correlation? We will never know, but if there is no connection, then it is truly an odd name for a cake!”

Ingredients:

·         10 medium eggs

·         1 cup cornstarch or potato starch

·         2 teaspoons baking powder

·         1 cup confectioners’ sugar, plus extra for decoration

Method:

1.       Separate the eggs and beat the whites until they form peaks.

2.       Mix all the other ingredients well, including the egg yolks.

3.       Fold in the egg whites and place in a greased Bundt pan.

4.       Bake at 350°F for 30 to 40 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

5.       Sprinkle with powdered sugar on top.

Varda Epstein: How did your family members feel about your conversion?

Genie Milgrom: It was not simple. I can’t imagine a family that would embrace this change. yet as hard as the conversion was, I am certain it was harder when they learned everyone was Jewish from birth.

Varda Epstein: How does it work to be a crypto-Jew? Is it only certain customs that are handed down, or at some point, do the elders have a talk with their descendants, explaining what’s what? Is it different for every family?

Genie Milgrom: It was different for all families but what we know is that the children were usually told at bar/bat mitzvah age. Customs that were strong for the family were passed down and mostly the ones to do with cooking. While very few customs about praying were handed down, holidays were observed but on different days to ward off suspicion.

Genie Milgrom accepts an award for her global work on the return of the bnei anusim or descendants of crypto-Jews at Young Israel of Kendall, in Miami.  

Varda Epstein: We already know you’re a woman of intuition. What did it feel like when you visited Fermoselle?
Genie Milgrom: This was a moment of knocking my breath out at every turn. I could feel the walls and the rocks and stones and I knew where to turn and I was walking and looking for streets that I just knew instinctively. It was eerie at best.

Genie Milgrom's first trip to Fermoselle, in background.

Varda Epstein: Do you think your ancestors made the right decision to go into hiding? What would you have done, in their shoes?

Genie Milgrom: I cannot say, honestly. I do not know why they stayed. I know many stayed because the elderly could not travel, yet I think my family may have thought they would hide for a little while and then maybe an attitude of “This too shall pass” set in. I don’t know what I would do. It would depend on how old the family members were, but knowing how little I like change, I may have chosen to stay and do what they did.

Aerial view of Fermoselle

Varda Epstein: Have your children come around to accepting your conversion? Do they think of themselves as Jewish?

Genie Milgrom: My children always accepted my conversion and subsequent knowledge that they are Jewish but they are not like me in observance. They consider themselves Jewish by ancestry.

The Douro River is the natural boundary between Portugal and Spain. It is known as Duero in Spain, and Douro in Portugal

Varda Epstein: What’s next for Genie Milgrom?

Genie Milgrom: I am working very hard on gathering Inquisition files around the world digitized and published, so others do not struggle as I have. I also will be publishing a Cuban kosher cookbook and a children’s book with the child retelling the story of the Jews that went into hiding.

Genie speaks to the EU Parliament about the bnei anusim.

*Descendants of Portuguese and Spanish Jews, forcibly converted centuries ago.

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Read more Judean Rose interviews:
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Akiva Fuld: “I’m Doing This For Me”

 A Father Speaks Out: The Murder of Malki Roth and the Refusal of Jordan to Extradite the Beast Ahlam Tamimi (Arnold Roth)

Israel's Jewish Indigenous Land Rights: A Conversation with Nan Greer, Part 1

Israel's Jewish Indigenous Land Rights: A Conversation with Nan Greer, Part 2

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