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Written by kristel
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Monday, 16 June 2008 |
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Tuesday 17th June, 8pm
Lecture by Akiva Orr:
Cultural Identity Complex as a motivation in politics
Akiva Orr, one of the founders of the
anti-capitalist and anti-zionist organisation Matzpen, will give his view on the
psychology behind zionism, an opinion that is not frequently heard.
Akiva Orr will soon turn 79 years of age and we are
honoured that he wants to come to Beit Sahour to share his long experience and
his point of view with us.
Akiva states that the first zionists did not only
want to establish a shelter for the persecuted jews, they wanted to create an
alternative identity for jews. Through zionism they created the right to secular
judaism, to be jewish without being religious.
Akiva Orr argues that to be Jewish is to be
religious; there is no such thing as a secular Jewish identity. Only those who
keep the mitzvoth, or "commandments", remain "indisputably Jews;" the
tenets of Judaism cannot be secularized. Zionism, which is predicated on such a
project of secularization, has failed. The secular JewishState has been unable to provide its Jewish citizens with a new, secular Jewish
identity. The failure was inevitable: "Zionism" is no more than a heresy of
Judaism and the ethnocentrism of Jewish Israelis. The "dominant criterion of
personal and political behaviour" should instead be the "wellbeing" of "humanity
as a whole and not one's self, nation, or God." The anthropocentric should take
the place of the theocentric, the ethnocentric and the egocentric
Akiva will also talk about the ongoing process of
disintegration in the Israeli society. The society consists of different
fragments that can only be hold together through confrontation with a shared
enemy.
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