This is Not the Way

Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel

David Goldberg

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780571271634
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

Few subjects invoke such passion as the history and current situation of Jews in Western societies. David Goldberg, a progressive Rabbi with many years' experience of dealing with other faiths and other Jews, takes the most difficult issues of this fraught relationship and confronts them head on. He argues that it is wrong to equate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, that it is far more difficult to be a Muslim in twenty-first century Britain than it is to be a Jew, that Israel is far too often treated sentimentally and that the identification of Israel with the Holocaust - memorializing the latter and sacralising the former - has had baneful effects. His discussion of the perennial question, 'who is a Jew?', is equally trenchant: he rejects all strict rabbinic criteria, proposing that a Jew is simply anyone who insists that he or she is one.

Forthright, challenging and witty, This is Not the Way will spark debate, criticism and delight in equal measure.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• : Introduction
• 1: Zionism triumphant, the Diaspora subservient
• 2: Creating Israel's foundation myth
• 3: Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
• 4: Who is a Jew?
• 5: God is dead, long live Behaviourism
• 6: How 'holy' is Holy Scripture?
• 7: Judaism and Jewish culture
• 8: Jewish ethics and the State of Israel
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author
• By the same author
• Copyright