Judaism Does Not Equal Israel (Easyread Large Edition)

Book excerpt: In December 2008, Israel's attack on Gaza provoked international condemnation. The killing of civilians anguished even many supporters of Israel, who found it morally indefensible. In this poignant, powerful volume, the influential Jewish thinker and critic Marc H. Ellis takes on the hard moral questions about Jewish support for the state of Israel. Reviewing the historical record of the past fifty years and envisioning the prospects for a just and lasting peace, Ellis makes an unyielding case based on central prophetic Jewish values that the present policies of the Israeli state cannot reasonably be defended. Ellis examines how Holocaust theology replaced God with Israel and gutted the prophetic moral core of Judaism as a religion. The future not only of Judaism but of Israel itself, he argues, hinges on a fundamental shift in Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and on a completely new direction in the peace process. At a time when critics of Israel are silenced with the charge of anti-Semitism, Ellis offers a prophetic Jewish alternative to the blind acceptance of Israeli policies, demonstrating ''great courage, integrity, and insight,'' according to Noam Chomsky. Sure to be the subject of fervent debate, Judaism Does Not Equal Israel marks a major effort by a leading American Jewish thinker to make the case that questioning current Israeli policies is fully consonant with being a faithful Jew. In his Jewish liberation theology, Ellis offers a way to assure the global survival of Judaism by moving beyond the stalemate of a two-state solution.