Betrayal with Excellent Manners

There is a specific kind of Jewish failure that war exposes very quickly.

It is not the primitive failure of blind loyalty: loud, defensive, allergic to self-criticism. That one is easy to recognize. The more dangerous failure is refined, articulate, and wrapped in the language of conscience. It presents itself as moral clarity. In truth, it is the quiet conversion of a shared Jewish burden into private innocence.

When Jewish reality turns ugly, when Israel is bleeding, when the images become unbearable, when simple association begins to carry a real social or professional cost, a certain kind of Jew begins an exit procedure. Not from Jewishness as such. That would be too crude. The holidays remain. Holocaust memory remains. The phrase “Never again” remains. What disappears is the weight.

The burden is quietly reassigned: to Israelis, to settlers, to the religious, to those who still take the whole Jewish story literally.

Then comes the familiar script: “Not in my name.” “I refuse to be represented by this.” “I am Jewish, but not that kind of Jew.”

Sometimes the pain is genuine. More often it is self-preservation wearing the mask of ethics. What began as........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)