Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro: Israel is NOT the “capital of the Jewish People”

[Tikkun Introductory note: As is true of all articles published or emailed out from Tikkun, the positions articulated are not those of Tikkun magazine unless they come as editorials from Rabbi Michael Lerner. Our desire is to provide a large tent for liberals and progressives, Jewish and interfaith and secular humanists and militant atheists to engage in presenting their views on politics, culture, social theory, environment,  literature, philosophy, psychology, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism (and other religions including scientism, Marxism, empiricism) and strategies to bring environmental sanity,  peace and social justice and heal, repair and transform our world (this is the meaning of the Hebrew word tikkun). Israel/Palestine is, Of all the topics that cause division and discord, one of the most prominent. Subscribers and donors have left us in the past either because we published articles or took position that were too critical of Israel or too challenging of some of the strategies and discourse used against it, too critical of the Palestinian posiitons or too supportive of them. We have never identified ourselves as a pro-Zionist publication or an anti-Zionist publication. When asked, Rabbi Lerner usually says, “I’m a religious Jew and take my positions from within the context of my understanding of that tradition, recognizing that there are many conflicting perspectives on most important questions within our tradition. That’s why when people ask me “what is the Jewish position on question x or y I remind them that Judaism is the 3500 year old argument about what Judaism is or says on most important questions. On many important issues, there is not one official Jewish position, but a number of positions. There is NO such division on at least one Torah command–to love the stranger/the Other.” So it is with considerable trepidation that we present the talk below by a strong anti-Zionist. Yet we also believe that his perspective, reasonably presented, deserves to be heard, and we’d welcome any readers to submit reasoned counter-arguments to the position he articulates in the talk he has given which you can listen to by cliquing below. But in making such arguments, remember that just as one would not want to dismiss democracy by pointing to its current manifestation in Trump’s America, one needs deeper arguments than the current behaviors of the Netanyahu regime in Israel to critique Zionism as a world view. And there are such arguments to be made, and counterarguments as well.]

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro explains why Trump is wrong to think that Jerusalem is the “capital of the Jewish people”

Click on either of these to hear Rabbi Shapiro:

https://youtu.be/rzYqimDCyjs

or
https://www.facebook.com/torahjews/videos/1552062438217914
/

 or if the link doesn’t work, copy it into your own URL and listen from there.
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One thought on “Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro: Israel is NOT the “capital of the Jewish People”

  1. What Rabbi Shapiro says is a disgrace to the Jewish people and I am ashamed sharing the same family name with this anti Zionist person.