 Good evening. I'm Gilbert Askar, professor here at SOAS, and I will be chairing this event. And before introducing our speakers for this evening and explaining how we will proceed, let me first welcome you in the name of one of the two sponsors of this meeting, the London Middle East Institute, of which I'm a member, but the director would have liked to welcome you, but he was not available this evening. So Dr. Hassan Hakimian asked me to welcome you in the name of the London Middle East Institute. And to speak in the name of the Centre for Jewish Studies, the other sponsor of this event, we have the director here of the Centre, Dr. Jair Wallach will say a few words. Thank you very much, Professor Askar. I'd like to welcome our speaker tonight, Professor Schlomo Zend, and our discussant, Professor David Feldman, a neighbor from Berkbeck. And to greet you all for coming. Thank you very much for coming and happy support for those of you who celebrate it. It's a pleasure to see you all and also wanted to invite you to other Centre for Jewish Studies events. We have weekly lectures on Wednesday evenings, and our next big event is film screening of the Shadow of Baghdad film about Iraqi Jews on the 20th of November. I'll be very brief not to take any time for what is promising to be a very stimulating discussion. I'll just say that, as you know, Professor Zend's previous two books stared a very heated debate, and I'm sure his third one would do as well because it touches on central and core issues of Jewish identity, past, present and future, first and foremost in Israel and the Middle East, but also for Jews in Europe, UK and elsewhere, and of course these are very different contexts. I think that as academics, intellectuals, I think our duty is to ask hard questions, sometimes provocative questions, and I think that Professor Zend has been doing it very successfully over the last few years, and if you agree with your arguments or if you disagree, I'm personally grateful for him for making us and pushing us to think harder and to reflect deeper on these very significant issues, so I leave the stage for the speakers. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, introducing our speakers, and it's my great pleasure to introduce one more time actually in the same room here, Professor Schlomo Sand, who presented his previous books, at least two of his previous books here at SOS, so he's here for the third time with this new book, but just a few words, although I'm sure most of you, if not all of you know about Professor Sand, he was born in 1946 in a displaced persons camp in Austria to polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and the family later migrated to Palestine. He studied history at the University of Tel Aviv and at the École d'Auzétue d'Ancien Social in Paris, and he currently teaches contemporary history at the University of Tel Aviv. He is the author of several books in Hebrew in French and some of them translated into English, four of them actually translated into English, Works and the Land, Israeli Intellectuals and the Nationalist Myth, The Invention of the Jewish People, which is the book who probably made or put Professor Sand on the global intellectual map on the nation and the Jewish people, which is at the same time a commentary on Ernesto Reneau, and The Invention of the Land of Israel. And this evening we are going to listen to him introducing his latest book. You have the title here, and he was just telling us that there is a subtitle that disappeared from the English translation, unfortunately, which is, I'll say it, which is an Israeli point of view. This is the original subtitle of the book. Professor Sand will first, as I said, introduce his book, explain what he wanted to convey through this book. After him, Professor David Feldman, who is the director of the Peers Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, here at our neighboring institution of Birkbeck, will discuss or comment on the book and maybe also on what Shlomo Sand will be saying. And of course, normally and naturally, we will ask Shlomo Sand to comment on the comment, after which we will open the discussion for you and for the audience, you will be able to put your questions, remarks and the rest. So that's how we will proceed and please join me then in welcoming our speakers for tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. Thank you to invite me to this university. It's the third time I think that I speak before you and I start to feel a little bit like in Tel Aviv. The only problem that I am obliged to speak in English and I prefer to speak in Hebrew, but I believe that it's not possible, no? Even that I see a few Israelis here. Anyway, I'm not used, you know, before yesterday I arrived to London and I'm not used to speak freely English, then excuse me for all the thoughts that I'm going to pronounce in English, OK? I will try to be clear, even I will make a lot of mistakes. This is the third one of a kind of a serial trilogy of books that I wrote about Zionism, Israel and Judaism. Now, this book is a very short one because people blame me that I'm writing too much in the first two books. Too long, a lot of footnotes, you see? It's not easy to read. And then I decided to write something else without footnotes. It's very difficult for a historian that is afraid from every word that he is writing to write without footnotes. See? It's not so easy. Then I decided to write without footnotes about a subject that is a kind of conclusion of my two first book about Judaism, Zionism and Israel. This book is personal, yeah? And the title, as you heard, is how I stopped to be a Jew. The question, the first question is, did I was a Jew before? No. From cultural point of view, I don't believe that a secular Judaism exists. Secular Judaism as an identity exists because people define themselves, secular people, atheists define themselves as Jews. It's not a problem. Jewish secular identity exists. The question is if culturally secular Jewishness exists and I don't believe. It's a long time that I was thinking about it. But I never thought that I will go to publish a book how I stopped to be a Jew. The first time that I started to think about the subject was by reading again an essay of Berton Russell. He wrote it in the 20s. Why I am not a Christian? Do you know it? Very famous one. No. You stopped to read Berton Russell. It's a very clever essay. Why I am not a Christian? In the beginning the name of the book was why I am not a Jew. But I developed it, I changed it a lot. But the idea, the first idea came from Berton Russell. If he is not a Christian, I am not a Jew. Now, there is a few other reasons that I decided to write this book. It also has a relationship with England and with London. I think it was three years ago. I was speaking here in the book shop. I don't remember the name of the book shop. A very nice place. I was speaking about my second book. The invention of the land of Israel. And it was with Brian Clark, the name of the moderator was Brian Clark, a very nice person from Oxford, I think. And we developed a discussion about Jewish people and he said that he agreed with me, all my critics about Zionism. But he is a very, very Jew. And I said that I don't understand in which way he is a Jew. We started to develop the idea. He said that he is a Jew, he feels a Jew. And I asked him which kind of Jewish culture, because he is a secular one, which kind of Jewish culture to his children. And he said that his children is not his children, it's their wife's children, which is from Christian origin. Then he don't have a problem of transmitting. Everything was very nice, very lovely. In the audience started to discuss. Oh, and you remember the evening, they discuss, most of the audience were from Jewish origin, good Englishmen. See in the corner, a group three or four non-Jew, from the Middle East, that didn't take a part in the discussion. And I feel very badly about them. And I remember going out from this bookshop and asking myself one question that I never asked before. How somebody that is not born to a Jewish mother can join the club? I mean, you can become a socialist, you can become a labor member, especially after yesterday evening. And you can become British even, with a lot of difficulties. You can become an Israeli, you can become Muslims very easily. And you can become a Jewish Orthodox believer. In which way somebody can become a secular Jew without having a mother that is Jewish? And then suddenly I say, no, it's an exclusive club, a closed club, no? Nobody can join the Jewish secular identity. It's true or not? When I expose it in Tel Aviv somebody say, he can convert it to Judaism in after it to jump away. No, really, really. A lot of people say, but it is exclusive club. You cannot join the club. 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, nobody wanted to join the club. It's true. Today, today, it's become more trendy, more easy to be a Jew in the Western world. And I felt bad this evening about this, the people that were there, they didn't take a part in the discussion about Jewish identity. This is another reason to write the book. There is a lot of others. Why I don't feel today, like all my life, that I have the right or the obligation to define myself as a Jew? As a historian, I know that a secular Judaism doesn't exist. There is a question if a Jewish sensibility exists and what is the meaning of a Jewish sensibility that exists, but one thing I'm sure, if there is Israeli culture, language, food, music, et cetera, you cannot find a Jewish secular culture that the Jewish has in the world. Not food, not music. People mix between Yiddish culture and it was a very, very important culture in the past. It was destroyed by a lot of forces, Nazism, Bolshevism, Zionism, et cetera, but it was in East Europe a very, very important Yiddish culture, an Yiddish identity, an Yiddish political parties, et cetera, et cetera. But if there is an Israeli culture, if there is an Yiddish culture, I don't understand what is a secular Jewish culture. But all this is not a reason to write a book about it, no? The second, you know, every important thing has a lot of reasons. You start to understand history by understanding it before. There is other reasons that I felt very badly to define myself as a Jew. You see, I'm living in the Israeli state. I'm living in Tel Aviv. Most of my life, after the deplacement camp, I was living in Tel Aviv. Now, Israel defined itself as a Jewish state. Agree with me, yeah? Not only Bibe Netanyahu, not only Avigdor Lieberman, but also the Labour Party in Israel insist. And not only the Labour Party even merits. It's another political left party define Israel as a Jewish state. Now, I'm living in a state, a Jewish state, that a quarter of the population are not defined as Jews by the Minister of Interior. 20% of Arab Israelis, I'm not speaking about the occupied territories. I'm speaking about citizens in the state of Israel. And 5% of emigrant, dissident of emigrant from Eastern Europe were not with Jewish mothers. Together, 25% of the population in Israel without occupied territories are not considered as Jews. How come that Israel defined itself as a Jewish state? In most of the Jewish in the world accepted. In most of the establishment communities in the world, Jewish one, not only accepted, are very, very happy with it. Imagine tomorrow that Britain decided to define itself as an English state. Or Christian English state, much better. How long it will exist, your kingdom? Big Britain, Great Britain, how long? If it's defined itself, not a state, a kingdom of all the British, but only of the English one. How the Scott will feel? How the Welsh will feel? How the children of emigrant that become British citizens will feel? They will feel like Arab Israelis feeling in Israel. I mean, they are living, walking, dying in a state that consider themselves the state of Woody Allen and not of them. Why? I am sure that there are people here, even on the stage that consider themselves as Jews. If you want or you want one, it's your state. Yes, it's your state, Professor Feldman. It's not the state of my pupils, Palestinian-Israelian pupils, my every Palestinian-Israelian pupils in Tel Aviv University. Then I ask you, seriously, defining myself as Jew, continue to be a Jew in Israel today. It's immoral, because a Jew in the state of Israel is a privileged citizen. True or not true? I don't speak of the occupal territories. 47 years? A population without any political civic rights. Not 47 days. Not 47 weeks. Not 47 months. 47 years. In the Western model thinking, we need a peace process. In the labor members, party in Israel ask the members of the labor party in Britain not to vote to recognize the Palestinian state. Wait to the peace process. 47 years. They hope that it will be again 47 years. No, but you know, a few years ago, when I started to to talk about the history of the Jewish, I was sure that the territorial problem would finish very quickly. Rationality, because I tried to be a rational person. I understood that, you know, Israel will decide very quickly to stop the occupation, because she wants to stay a Jewish state. I make a mistake, by the way. If you want, I will develop it later, because I promise to speak only 30, maximum 30 minutes. I will continue to speak about Jewish identity and not about the political problem of Israel today. OK? Going back, I decided to write this book, declaring that I am not a Jew, because I am ashamed to be a Jew in Israel. First of all, because I am a privileged citizen, as I said before. And if Britain will declare that it's an English state, the Englishmen that will insist that they are English will not be moral in my point of view. I compare it also with other states. You see? If Spain will declare tomorrow that is not a state of all the Spanish, but only of the Castilians, the Catalan will not take it very nicely. In the Basque, in the Andalusian also. But Israel is a state, a communitary state. You understand? Not a republic. Not a state of its citizens. It's not looking the good of its citizens that are paying the taxes. It's looking of the good of the Jewish in London, hoping that one day they will arrive. This is another reason that I wrote this book. I can continue with all other reasons, thinking that all my life, when I define myself as a Jew, it was firstly because anti-Semitism. I remember repeating as a leftist militant always that I am a Jew till the last anti-Semitic person will live with us in this planet. And I repeat it and repeat it for a long of years and I become old with this idea. And then I decide it's not enough to define something in this way. Because if I would define myself as a Jew because of anti-Semitism, in some way I will give them a kind of victory. If I define myself as a Jew because of the past, because of the memory, in some way the Nazis won. Why? Because they consider the Jews as a sensillist figure in history. A sensillist identity. A sensillist, I am saying, Jewishness for the Nazis, like for the anti-Semitic racist is a sensillist identity. Then if I consider myself as a Jew, there is some essentialism, my definition. And I don't feel very comfortable about it. And I don't like that the Nazis won. They lost the battle and they won from the point of view of ideologically. People ask me, no, a Jew, stay a Jew forever. Then it's a victory of anti-Semitism. And now I decided that I don't know that the anti-Semitic will win. It's finished. And I decided that I am not a Jew. What was the reaction about it? Terrible people are feeling, how come? But a day before yesterday I took the plane from Tel Aviv to London. And I start to speak with a young woman about our travel to London. She said she is going to meet a guy and she knows that she is engaged. I said, oh, fantastic. Fantastic. You quote an Englishman. She said, yes, yes, but he is a Jew. Then I say, oh, I don't care. Why you don't care? If he was from Christian origins, the same thing. It's nice that you quote an Englishman. I ask her if he is blonde because she was with very dark hair. And if from where you come, she is from Tashkent, 20 years in Israel. Haifa. Tashkent. The look was real Tatarian, by the way. I mean, a very nice woman, very lovely woman, but with Tatarian, you know. A little Mongol. Me, too, have a little bit of it. Anyway, she is 20 years in Israel. And then I say, oh, it's fantastic. And she says, he is a Jew. I say, I don't care if he is a Jew or not a Jew. He is a good man, yes. But you have to understand, it's important that he is a Jew. I ask, why? You are not religious. By the way, all around us, it was a acidic people. And she was with jeans like this, very sexy. And I ask her, why so important for her that he is a Jew? Because of the blood, she says. Because of the blood. Which blood? Jewish blood? OK. She is not a scientific person. She is not intellectual. But I am walking in Tel Aviv University, where you can find departments that people, professors, scientific people are looking for the Jewish DNA. Do you know it? After publishing the first book, I was attacked. I remember an article about me in the New York Times. A very nice article. In the end of the article, Patricia Cohen, by the way, I don't know her journalist, she was not aggressive against me. But in the end, she called genetician in New York, and they say, no, no, Shlomo Sand is not right because there is a DNA, a Jewish DNA. It's not a joke. The problem is with Jewish identity today, secular Jewish identity, that it's too weak to be a real identity. How a secular Jew can define himself? By blood, like this young woman, no? There is a common DNA for the Jewish in the world or not? Look on the Jews. The antisemitic were right saying that it is a kind of people race. It's not a joke. In my university people are looking without a lot of success for Jewish DNA because it's so difficult to define a secular Jew. What is the other way to define a secular Jew? It's by the Shoah, no? You cannot stop to be a Jew because of the Shoah. I heard it a lot of times. And then defining somebody only around a memory, in a memory of a tragedy, can become very perversive. Perversive? Perver. Pervers. To define somebody identity only after a memory of a tragedy can be very perverse. And this is one of the acts of Jewish secular identity in the beginning of the 21 century. True or not true? While it can be perversive, because look on the education today in Israel, people are Jews because of the Shoah. The third way to define yourself as a Jew is to identify with Israel. It's one of the means to define yourself as a Jew. In the Israeli policy, the last 50 years are playing with this a lot. To be a Jew is to identify with Israel. To identify with the Jewish state. You will say, but it's not rational. You can become a Jew, to be a Jew and anti-Zionist. But in the end, in the end of the story, who won in this identical politics today? How Israel forced people to define themselves as a Jew? It feel very, very difficult to define themselves as a Jew. What Israel imposed on them? You have to identify with the Jewish state. In Israel is gaining a lot with this policy. I decided that I don't belong to the same identity of a Victor Lieberman. He want me to say a Jew. Bibi Netanyi want me to live in the Jewish state. I decided to resign. And I don't care what people will think about me. Thank you very much. Thank you, Shlomo, for the book and for your talk this evening. Thank you, Gilbert, for the invitation to speak. One of the pleasures of opening Shlomo's book was to see the dedication to Eric Hobsbawl there. It was my privilege to work with Eric. I'm at Birkbeck, where he was a historian, then became president of the college. And I ran one of the last research projects for him when he was awarded the Balzan Prize. I mention that, because I think one of the things Shlomo and I and Eric share is a sort of skepticism, a common skepticism in the face of the claims made by nationalisms of all sorts. And so I think that although some of what I say is going to be critical, I think it's important to keep in mind that sort of common starting point in a common project. Shlomo's book is short, which is one of its many merits. It's not war and peace. It's also, and this is actually worth saying, it has been brilliantly translated by a David Fernbach. It's packed with insights and provocations and autobiographical vignettes. It's written in a spirit of impassioned pessimism. And what I want to say about it will come like the Holy Trinity in three parts. I want to talk about Israel and Shlomo's Republican vision. Secondly, I want to ask why Shlomo causes so much ruckus with his work. And then I want to talk about Shlomo's view of Jewish history and of Jewish identity and of Jewish secular identity in the diaspora. Reading Shlomo's book, just on that point, reading Shlomo's book, I realised that it is not only Israelis who support the current government, who have contempt for Jewish secular diaspora culture. It's also, I think, I got that flavour from Shlomo's remarks. Well, how I stopped being a Jew, as Shlomo explained, is not only a call for Israel to create itself from the occupation, but it's also, and this is what is more rare, it connects that to the structural inequality of Jews and Arabs within Israel. The political argument at the core of the book concerns the configuration of nationality and citizenship in Israel. And as we've been told, 20% of the population of Israel is Arab. They live in a state that designates itself as the state of the Jews. Moreover, this difference in nationality has in practice, and despite rights as individuals consigned Arabs in Israel to a structure of discrimination in part as a result of legally sanctioned disadvantage, in part as a way in which resources are distributed. It's probably worth just for a moment to be dwelling on some of the facts and figures here to get a sense of the dimensions of the injustice. If we look at poverty, for example, 50% of Arab families in Israel, this is in Israel behind the 67 boundaries, live in poverty, whereas the equivalent figure for Jewish families is just 15%. A huge contributri factor here, of course, is the discriminatory and neglectful policies of the state. Over land, over planning, over rural and urban development, over housing provision. In 1940, eight Jews controlled 13.5% of the land. By the 1960s, this had risen to 93%. According to the Israeli scholar Oren Yifdachel, 50% to 60% of Arab-held land was expropriated by the state. Then there's the issue of unequal funding to Arab municipalities. Perhaps it's not surprising that in 2012, 67% of Israeli Arabs believed that Israel is a racist state. Shlomo pays attention to this and that he draws our attention to it and it's important that he does. His answer to the problem is the Republican one. Nationality and citizenship he proposes should become one and the same. Not to have Israeli citizens with a Jewish nationality, but Israeli citizens with an Israeli nationality which is open to all inhabitants. It's an inspiring vision. It was inspiring vision in France in 1789 which I'm sure is where Shlomo derives it from. I think it's no coincidence that the book was indeed written in French. The suggestion, Shlomo's focus on citizenship and nationality is important because I think it helps us to think about Israel and Palestine and the state of Israel itself in terms other than a primordial conflict of identities between Jew and Palestinian. But in terms of a more general problem which takes a particular and acute form in Israel of how citizenship can take account of more than one nationality within the territory of a given state. Although Shlomo had some fun asking what would it be if England, he says, well, let's say the United Kingdom belonged to England and not to the Scots or the Welsh or the Irish. Well, actually, there are a lot of people who think that it does just that and Scotland has just had a referendum based upon that premise in a way about English hegemony here. Which is not, of course, to say, well, Israel is just like the UK but it is a particular and, as I said, particularly acute manifestation of a general problem. In that case, a product of settlement, colonialism, war, displacement, migration and more war. What is needed in Israel, among other things, as the All Commission in the early 2000s said, is a massive program of affirmative action. It's not clear to me that in the face of such structural inequality in Israel and the need to redress that and in the increasing identification of the Arab population in Israel with Palestinian nationality, that a Republican citizenship is going to do the trick. After all, nationalities and identities are maintained in part for instrumental reasons. For Israeli Arabs or Israeli Palestinians and maintaining that identity, demanding and claiming rights on that basis may prove a more attractive program than Schlomo's Republican uninflected identity. There is, I think, a need to recognize the Palestinians as a national minority in Israel with collective as well as individual rights and without this, republicanism will just entrench a brutal majoritarianism. In going for republicanism, I think Schlomo implicitly he seems to reject the possibility of a pluralist and, if you like, a multicultural politics in Israel. And he does the same for Jews outside of Israel as well. But before coming to that question, I want to ask a different one, which is why do people get so upset by what Schlomo has to say? Is it because of his radical and anti-zionist position? Well, to a degree, that's so. He's standing outside of the consensus. But actually, that position is not so unusual. There are others who occupy it and don't necessarily express it in the same way, who don't attract the same vehement opposition. Is it because he's accused by other scholars of sometimes getting things wrong? Well, historians can be robust. They can respond to an erring colleague as if he were an amalikite who should be slain hip and thigh. But all the same, I don't think that is the answer. And it's not the answer to why at times I felt a degree of unease reading some passages in how I stopped being a Jew. Schlomo rails against those who, he says, regard Jewishness as an immutable and monolithic essence. Judaism, he says, has fashioned a strongly particularist ethno-religious morality. He reminds us of the stories of biblical genocide, the arts of the Haggadah, which call on God to pour out his wrath on the Goyim, and rightly points out that love thy neighbour as thyself was in that passage from Leviticus, who our neighbour was, was actually cast rather narrowly. It was not humanity in general. All of this is correct, but simply to characterize Judaism in these terms, and I say this, as someone who is utterly secular, who has not even got a smidgen of God-fearing decency in him. To present Judaism in these terms is a misleading caricature. It is cherry-picking, but it is picking only the rotten, maggot-ridden, infested cherries. The Hebrew prophets bizarrely are thrown away by Schlomo. They're really Christian, he says. And the reworking of Judaism in the 19th century, actually in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, is ignored by him. In that period, even among the Orthodox, and I'll be brief, even among the Orthodox, Judaism was understood then as a religion in two parts. One part of it, they said, was universal. It was an ethical monotheism for everyone. And there was another bit for the Jews. Now, it clearly is the case that, if I forget his phrase correctly, a strongly-particularist ethno-religious morality can be used in Israel, drawing on Jewish teachings to justify policies and actions in the present. And to present this as the sum of Judaism, even of Orthodox Judaism, I think is partial. But what is really troubling to me is that in its partiality it reproduces exactly the criticisms made of Jews in Judaism by 19th-century Judeophobes and anti-Semites to assert that Jews could not be given equal rights, that it was used to justify Jews unequal disadvantage status as citizens in Europe. Moreover, whether unintentionally perhaps, I think this line of argument promotes the idea that the problems in Israel lie in Jewishness and in Jewish teachings. It gives comfort to those who want to give an essentialist misleading and anti-Semitic account of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. And indeed it threatens to undo the good work Shlomo has done by directing us to focus on citizenship and nationality. Now lastly, I want to turn to his comments on identity and the Jews. Shlomo issues a rallying call for a single Israeli citizenship and much else in his book follows from this. He and other Jews must cease to have a nationality which is separate from their citizenship and by the same token Israel is then off limits for Jews elsewhere in the world. Israel has a Republican Israeli citizenship, it's no longer the state of the Jews. The Jewish diaspora no longer has a claim to intervene or speak to Israel on the basis of ethnic affiliation. This, as I take it, is Shlomo's argument. The silencing of me and my friends of Israel's Jewish critics is in this collateral damage. You know, we're a sad accident but we do have to belt up if the program is to go forward. Well, Shlomo claims that secular Jewish identity as part of Israel is based on an identification with dissent. That's not the good dissent, D-I-S-E-N-T, but the bad dissent, D-E-S-C-E-N-T. There is no way of life, no culture, as he's told us, held in common by secular Jews. It is empty in contrast to the way of life, to the culture offered by religious Judaism. It is based simply on the idea of common dissent from the seed of Abraham and it is hollow. And he has much fun with what he rightly calls pseudo-religious practices. And he also rightly says that the main expression of the Jewish diaspora is in its identification with Israel and that in general the diaspora mobilizes support for Israel and its policies. So what's wrong with this? Well, I think first of all historically there's a massive gap in the account that Schlomo gives us. He goes from Jewishness as a culture in what he calls the Yiddish people for example, so Jewishness encompasses a religion and a way of life to nationality in Israel. What's missed out? What's missed out is the history of Jewish emancipation of Jewish civil equality in Western and Central Europe in and actually in either ignoring or denigrating the history of emancipation in an ironic way Schlomo affiliates himself with the main tendencies indeed of Jewish nationalist historiography. Why is this important? It's important because as Jews acquired civic equality Jewishness Jewish identity ceased to become a culture in the terms that Schlomo has defined it a way of an all-encompassing way of life. It became one identity that Jews had among many. They were also patriots they were also class subjects that they followed their professions that had an association of life in civil society. Jewish identity thinned out but it did not disappear. Why didn't it disappear? Well in part because Jews were still recognized by non-Jews as Jews with particular traits either positive or often negative but also not because of a myth of dissent although that was for some but because of history and culture and the ways in which at different times Jews felt that their history bore upon their present. And for Schlomo to say that there is no secular Jewish culture is simply not the case. It's wrong for the 19th, 20th centuries and it's wrong for the present as well. It is true to say that interaction with Israel forms a part of that culture but it's only a part of that culture and I think that one of the reasons why across western Europe and to an extent in the United States a secular Jewish culture is undergoing an increase in liveliness is actually a Jewish response to the politics of multiculturalism. It's actually an environment in which for some people this offers an opportunity. Now I think part of the disagreement between Schlomo and me here is actually over the use of the term culture and Schlomo earlier said in an important and revealing way that he's using culture in an anthropological sense and to that extent I agree with him, there is no secular Jewish way of life but if we think of culture as a set of signifying practices and identities there is a secular Jewish culture in Europe. The Aryan identity is also a culture, okay? The Aryan identity in the 30s is also was a culture, yeah? Sorry. The Aryan identity. So beyond that I'm sorry, I'll just... I'm sorry that I just... So actually do you want to say about identity again? Because I think that to say I will simply stop being a Jew to exit as an act of unilateral as an act of unilateral disaffiliation is to misunderstand the way in which identities work in society. We are less in control of our destinies than that. Identity is relational. Or not the only ones in control. Others name us, others position us and we have to respond in one way or another. Sometimes for some of us as Jews identity is imposed from without as well as constructed from within. It is dynamic. Shlomu may seek to exit from the Jewish fold but the fury that his work gives rise to arises directly from the fact that he is or was a Jew and as for Israel's Jewish critics whom Shlomu would be prepared to silence as a price worth paying I have to say that he will find most of us uncooperative. That silence is not an option because Jews in the diaspora continually are interpolated in the debate on Israel and Palestine by others. By those in Israel and outside who speak in our name or call on us to support Israel as Jews or in some cases to speak out in criticism. I'll draw to a close. I want to welcome Shlomu's book. Provocation is good but as history I have my differences with it and as politics I believe it is self defeating. I think he rejects potential allies both in Israel among Jews and Arabs there and in the diaspora. As autobiography it is a very entertaining and interesting read. But what about Shlomu's aspirations to stop being a Jew? It reminds, his aspiration here reminds me of some wise words that were once said to me which was David you can divorce your wife but you can't divorce your ex-wife. Shlomu is trying to divorce his ex-wife. Sorry again that I disturb you in thanks a lot that you accept to confront me it's not so easy for English Jews to confront Shlomu's hand. Thank you very much. Now, what is the problem with your definitions about nationalism ethnicity identity you expose me as a Jacobin no, I'm not it's ears that I'm against Jacobin Republicanism and I don't want that Israel will become a kind of Jacobin Republic not at all I'm not a Knanian Knanian Knanian you said it was a current, a cultural current in the beginning of the 50s no but saying that even Britain, you know has problems of identity I know it, I'm read papers I'm looking in the TV I know what the Scots, a part of the Scots is thinking but I don't like this way not to define exactly identical politics in a nation in a state nation Britain is different from France in a good way in a bad way in a good way that she kept much more pluralistic local culture than France and I'm much more English liberal than French Republican in this identical politics I don't want to make the Israeli Arabs Israelis, pure Israelis I want that they will keep besides their culture in have also my culture I think in the end of the book I'm saying that every Arab Israeli child has to learn very very carefully Hebrew but every Jew Israelis has to learn Arabic not only because he is living in a state with so many Arabs also because he is living in the Middle East then sorry to interpret at me Israeli now what is the difference between Great Britain in little Israel Britain is not saying to the Scots it's not your kingdom and you know from sensibility from identical politics is very important to be a little bit hypocrite Israeli is not hypocrite she say to the Arabs it's not your state try do it in London same to the Scots it's not your state it's not the same thing but I don't want to speak a lot about it I will give one example yes I know what is English hegemony in United Kingdom I have not illusions but it's not the same thing as the Israeli Jewish hegemony in Israel then I am not a Jacobin sorry forgive you one example tell me an English man from Christian origin can married a nice girl from Jewish origin or not yes but in Israel no in who fix the laws that a Jew cannot marry the non-Jew in Israel religious people not at all before the establishment in 1948 in 1947 Ben Gurion sign that in Israel it will not be civic marriages in that time the religious orthodox were very very weak it wasn't a problem electoral problem it was because Ben Gurion was afraid very afraid the Jews will become mixed non-Jews like in England like in United States like in France stop the marriages save the Jewish people by for better not let people married with non-Jew it's the only people in the world that you can save it if the person will not marry non-Jews true or not true think about identity if a Jewish person fall in love with the non-Jews what will happen with the Jewish sensibility with the Jewish identity with the pluralistic identity it will disappear in one, two, three generations sorry now you blame me in some way a very nice way but you blame me that a lot of argument is the argument of the anti-semitic of the 19th century not at all I'm not against Jewish identity in one condition the Jewishness will be the point of departure not the point of arrival first of all because it's empty secondly because I'm a universalist yes you cannot divorce an ex-wife but you can forget it now by the way I put a lot of episode jokes, anecdotes in my book it's much better than two others book but what is important in this book you see in the book that I wrote about the invention of the land of Israel I was very careful not to identify Jewishness with Zionism because for me historically Zionism is a kind of denial of Judaism it's clear in the second book about the land of Israel as you know Judaism all the establishment religious establishment of Judaism till the second world war were in majority against Zionism for a Jew the land the holy land wasn't his land it was the land of God God gave God took in when the Messiah will come he will give back maybe then as you couldn't feel that he is the property of the land of the holy land I insist in the book the Jewishness is not Zionism Jewishness is not nationalism but it doesn't mean that I like very much the Jewish religion anyway I am against all monotheism even the Muslim but it's very important to understand that Zionism picked up a lot of things from the Jewish tradition Zionism in Israel is not a Jewish state but they picked up like always the nationalism is doing what they like from the past they constructed the past now in this book the first time I insist that even Zionism is not Judaism it doesn't mean that Judaism is a very very ethical religion it's very important to understand it for Judaism a Jew cannot marry the non Jew do you know it? I am against it, I am for love I don't care if my daughter will marry the non Jew maybe you yes, not me or ex-daughter again, again, again you have to understand Jewish ethics in my point of view are not the ethics that I dream of why? because in Jewishness the ethics is intergroup you say it in English intergroup it's not universalist ethics you have to understand Muslims or Christianity why? not only because of the Bible because it was a minority that suffered from strong power around that developed an intergroup ethics you cannot find rabbis that fought today in England, in France for the suffering against the suffering of the Palestinians Orthodox rabbis? not you can find Orthodox rabbis fighting against the Zionism the Zionist state not because the solidarity with the Palestinians, not at all you understand me? there are a lot of Orthodox rabbis that are fighting against Zionism but you don't have in the Jewish ethics you don't have a cosmopolitism ethics universal ethics the fact that so many Jews and I insist in the book in the 19th century also in the 20th century so many people from Jewish origin fought in all the battles for the human being all the battles against suffering it wasn't because the Jewish ethics they were humanists if they were far away from the Jewish religion from Marx passing Rosa Luxembourg till Deutsche or Howard Zinn but all these generation of people from Jewish origin Jewish background like me by the way fought for universal causes not because they were Jews because they left Jewishness the people that stay with the Jewish religion didn't fought for causes universal causes do you know it and by the way in the beginning of the 21th century there are less and less people from Jewish origin that fought for universal causes you notice it why because the reason that so many people from Jewish origin fought against injustice against suffering because they came from a suffering minority a suffering long years minority that suffer from Christian civilization much more than from the Muslims lately in Paris, London in New York people are speaking about the Judeo-Christianity you heard about the civilization Judeo-Christianity civilization people like the term in the first book I heard that my aunt didn't know when they pushed her to Auschwitz that one day Europe, the western world will define itself as a Judeo-Christian civilization it's nice, no? there is not a Jewish Christian civilization there is a Christian civilization that oppressed the Jewishness much more than all other civilization in history this is the truth in this minority become a very tough minority believing in a chosen people it was one of the conditions to stay a Jew to know that you are a chosen people in it was all right for me but today to meet people that define themselves as Jews knowing that you is a shik it's trendy today they are exceptional in the western world and also deeply it disgusts me people that try to make profit of suffering capital of the past making symbolic capital of suffering of the past disgusts me profoundly and this is one of the acts in Jewish identity in the western world today no not only Bibi Netanyahu is doing it not only Bibi Netanyahu insists that Israel has to have a nuclear weapon in nobody else in the Middle East why? why the Iran cannot have a weapon a nuclear weapon because it's a small state in face of the great state of Israel I don't want Iran will have a nuclear weapon but all this discussion international discussion I asked myself how come how it's natural that Israel will have in great nuclear submarine from Germany lately Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon how come this is a Jewish identity besides a lot of other things no it's very important I am not against Jewish identity in one condition that in this identity you didn't try to separate yourself from other people not to mix with other people not to want that your decedent people will become stay Jewish in not to live with others now you spoke that the world is composed of identities I have a little chapter in the book that identity is not a hat hat you can have a lot of identities I am rich with identities I will not expose all of them here yes I am Israeli I am a professor of history I am a lot of other thoughts and it's important everybody has a lot of identities in history two kind of identities were exclusive identities it was monotoism it was modern nationalism you cannot be English and French in the same time till lately when the nationalism started to you cannot be German and French in the same time this is the essence of modern identity that we call nationalism but there is other identities that can live with other identities but you cannot be a Jew in a Muslim at the same time you cannot be a Christian in a Muslim at the same time I am against this exclusive identity of any sort and for the end because I don't want to be too long I am very curious what you are thinking about all this problem but one thing important about empty identity you see as a historian I know, I studied the Aryan identity you will agree that the Aryan identity existed existed in the past you agree with it or not in the thirties, no? oh, in the thirties a lot of Germans believed that they are from Aryan race it was a identity ah, you agree that it wasn't a real race a real blood but the identity existed if people identify they save as Aryan the Aryan identity exists I don't respect this identity you know why? not only because it was based of mythology mythology not only because this identity was exclusive identity that consider people in essentialist way but it existed a lot of Germans even Englishmen in that time consider themselves as Aryan I ask you how we have to accept this kind of identity exclusive identity in another way I don't think the Jewishness is the same thing like the Aryanism not at all I don't compare first of all from the ideological point of view it's not the same even if in Judaism day you have a base of racist thinking but it was important that the Aryan identity if you want was the identity that not only with Jews but with Slavs and all others took them all other identities has inferior identities you agree with it the Jewish identity is very very specific but one thing you can compare the Aryan identity was a weak identity this is one of the reason of the aggressivity of this identity you understand me it was empty from cultural point of view it was empty there is not Aryan culture in history they try to build it a little bit Wagner and others but you cannot speak about Aryan culture you can speak about German culture about the Israeli culture about English culture even Scott culture a little bit secular Jewish culture no, it's identity I agree I'm not against Jewish identity everybody can identify himself as he want but let me identify myself as I want the Jews most of the Jews don't accept it it's three days that I get in got letters after the publication that blame me to be a traitor thank you very much thank you very much to both speakers for this fascinating very lively discussion which is actually far beyond just the topic of one religion actually it can extend the discussion to all religions in some way religious identities and the issue of identity beyond religion itself so this is a very interesting discussion