Finding an antidote to Zionism in the Hebrew Tradition

Hillel House and the Imperative of Hillel the Elder

Finding an antidote to Zionism in the Hebrew Tradition

The Moral Imperative of Hillel the Elder

Emanuel Pastreich

Independent Candidate for President

April 30, 2024

When I watch the brave efforts of young people across the United States, and across the world, to take action in opposition to the techno-fascism confronting us in Gaza, and doing so even as the leaders of the false left, and of the false “truth telling” right, mislead them as to what is happening in Israel, I am led back to the question of what is the essence of Jewish thought that has been so obscured by Zionist distortions.

Could something in the Jewish tradition serve to lead youth forward globally without respect to religion? Could the Jewish tradition offer those of Jewish faith, or Jewish heritage, Jews who struggle against false gods planted in recent times so as to reroute all action against injustice towards the defense of Israel--that great bio-fascist and techno-tyrannical ground zero for the world?

Can the best of Jewish thought inspire our condemnation of the actions taken against the citizens of Gaza by the IDF and other private intelligence and security contractors with global presence?

One of the best-known sources for propagating Israeli narratives is Hillel House a center for promoting Jewish culture and religion found on many American campuses.

Hillel House is deployed as part of a global operation to promote war and justify Israeli actions. This operation is destructive to Jews in the Middle East and around the world, not to mention the Palestinians who are being murdered daily.

For example, Hillel House at Columbia University held a “JSTREETCU: Lunch and Learn with Rabbi Hain” on December 2nd, 2023 on the topic of “Self-defense and the Sanctity of Human Life: The Torah of Israel-Gaza right now.”

The entire purpose of the talk was to justify the rape of Gaza as an act of self-defense in response to the ambiguous “October 7th incident.”

Hillel House activities take place at Columbia University at the same time that police arrest protesters against the Gaza Genocide, protesters who stand in clear opposition to the justification of IDF actions that take place at Hillel House (Columbia/Barnard Hillel).

Do not forget that 21 Democratic lawmakers sent a public letter to the Trustees of Columbia University demanding they “take action now” to shut down the student protests they claim were set up by “anti-Jewish activists.”

But the protesters, not the operatives at Hillel House, have more in common with the teachings of Hillel the Elder. Most likely Hillel the Elder would have stood with his contemporary Jesus in the protests against imperialism: Rome then, Britain and the United States today.

Consider the most famous statement of Hillel the Elder,

“If not me, whom? If not now, when?”

This line means, simply, “Do not expect others to take moral action on your behalf, but take action yourself. If the question is when should you take action, what possible justification is there for not taking action now?” 

This quote, which I assumed was original until I checked recently, is a simplification of the original text,

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And being for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?";

I interpret that text to mean,

“If I do not take moral responsibility for my own actions, who will take moral action on my behalf? If I do take moral action myself, who am I ultimately? And if I am to take moral action, if I do not do so now, then when shall I do so?”

Every student, every young person, who is compelled to take action against the slaughter in Gaza, the most visible tip of a global slaughter of the dispossessed in Palestine, in the Middle East, in Africa, and around the world, is struggling with the imperative that Hillel the Elder articulated so precisely.

Can one justify putting off moral action? Can one justify expecting others to carry out moral action on one’s behalf?

For the student at Columbia, or any university, the question is, “Can I play it safe so as to get a good job, have a clean record while in college, and leave it to others to take moral action, to risk their lives, in Gaza, or elsewhere? Can I put off moral action until after I finish my final exams, get a college degree, or the security of a stable job?” 

The same spirit was conveyed by Frederick Douglass as, “Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.”

Hillel the Elder also wrote,

“In a place where no one behaves like a human being, you must strive to be human!”

This command is just as powerful and just as central to the current struggle. We must act humanely precisely because those around us do not do so. We are not justified to assume that because brutality and hypocrisy have become the norm that therefore we must conform with evil. Rather the moral demand made of us, made by us, is that we must become the humans that we cannot find around us.

Ultimately the protests against Gaza are a protest against a creeping totalitarianism sold to citizens, to unsuspecting youth, as “self-realization” and “individual expression” by fascistic marketing operations like Starbucks (which is directly linked to the Israel project).

Students are waking up to the chatting, messaging, tracking, and surveillance operation that has slowly, imperceptibly, wrapped its tentacles around the legs of youth. That painful awakening lies behind the current protests.

Sadly, the manner in which technology is employed to destroy people in Palestine, and then is exported to the US-Mexican wall, and to your local shopping mall, is left out of the protests. The manner in which the rich in Israel, with their partners in the US, Germany, France and elsewhere, are using the Gaza slaughter to destroy the lives of working people both Muslim and Jewish, is also being papered over.

But we can see the beginning of a true revolution, a true moral commitment to truth, even if that truth, like the truth revealed to Oedipus the King, leads us to see how we have been involved in terrible sins without being aware of our actions for years—and for older people like myself, for decades.

I write these words, not only as a candidate for president who wishes to use truth, not pale reflections of truth acceptable to those living in comfortable upper West Side apartments, to drive forward a revolution, but also as someone whose father’s family were poor Jews who immigrated from Budapest, and also from southern Austria, to New York City in search of freedom from the terrible persecution of working Jews in the late 19th century.

Although I do not identify myself as Jewish, that tradition is a part of who I am and I must, we must, chose exactly what that Jewish tradition means, and what it does not mean.

We must reject the Zionist project which has reinterpreted the general Jewish ethnic continuity from ancient times as a racist creed for domination with new strands of eugenics implanted in it from the 19^th century.

Zionism has a complex history that we can explore another day, or turn to the writings of those much better informed than myself. But what we can conclude definitively that Zionism today is fascism written right to left.