http://www.jrep.com/Columnists/Article-1.html
Hirsh Goodman: Zap -- You’re Jewish
When it comes to the settlement movement,the sky is now the limit,including
a crash course of 12 working days in how to transform from an Andes Indian
into a settler Jew
The Ha'aretz newspaper's weekend magazine of July 19 carried a cover story
about 90 Indians from villages tucked far up in the remote mountains of Peru
who had been converted to Judaism in Lima in a record two weeks. They were
then flown to Israel where they were sent directly to two Israeli
settlements on the West Bank, Alon Shvut and Karmei Tzur, where they will
study in yeshivah and pray, at the state’s expense, for the messiah to
arrive.
The 90, constituting 18 family units, remarkably, were converted by an
official rabbinical delegation sent from Israel with the blessings of Chief
Ashkenazi Rabbi Israel Lau. Though they cannot speak a word of Hebrew, the
90 were given Hebrew names. Though they have never heard of Theodor Herzl,
they are ardent Zionists who do not doubt for a minute that Israel is the
Jewish state. And while Israeli politics are a total mystery to them, as is
the debate over the future of the territories, that Judea and Samaria belong
to the State of Israel is beyond question.
Why the 90 Peruvian Indians wanted to become Jewish was not made quite clear
in the piece, other than a general sentiment that Abraham was the father of
us all. What is made clear is that the 3,000-strong Peruvian Jewish
community told the rabbinical delegation that they could convert whomever
they want, as long as the converts don’t remain in Peru. The Jewish
community, it was explained, has enough difficulties of its own without
having to deal with the "socioeconomic" problems the new converts would have
brought with them.
One explanation for this passion to become Jewish, though, may be that a
warm mobile home in the Judean Hills was a better propsect than scratching
out a living in the Andes. Another is Sigundo Villanova, now Zerubavel
Tzadkiya, a former Peruvian Indian who somehow arrived here in 1990 and
moved to the radical West Bank settlement of Tapuah with his wife and six
children. The children, who now have their own families, all continue to
live on Tapuah, as do Zerubavel’s brother and his family. All are now firmly
ultra-nationalist, messianic and determined to bring as many other Peruvian
Indians over to Israel as possible.
Adding to our numbers is admirable in these troubled times, but why a
serious and staid Jewish scholar like Rabbi Lau would go along with the
scheme is an enigma. One can understand the folks at Alon Shvut and Karmei
Tzur being happy to get their hands on anyone prepared to join them. But it
is hard to believe that Israel would send out an official rabbinical
delegation to convert these people to a religion they know nothing about and
bring them slap into the middle of a conflict they have no part in.
To have done so is, frankly, incomprehensible and becomes all the more so
when viewed in the context of the rabbinate’s attitude toward others who
have tried to convert. Why, one wonders, does it take only two weeks to
convert a Peruvian mountain Indian while tens of thousands of immigrants to
Israel from the former Soviet Union, who have been here for a decade, serve
in the army and have become the backbone of society, are put through the
wringer before they are accepted as Jews? The criteria demanded of them for
conversion are so strict that most simply cannot go through the process. In
consequence they have to continue going to Cyprus to get married, and are
buried outside the cemetery wall, even when they die for their country. And
here we have people who don’t know a mohel from a shohet who are immediately
inducted into what is supposed to be a non-proselytizing religion and
brought to Israel to live on the dole.
I am all for the ingathering of the exiles and I have nothing against
Peruvians, Indian or otherwise. But I find it confusing when someone like
Sigundo Villanova seems to get one up on someone as undeniably brilliant as
Rabbi Israel Lau and on the government of Israel by circumventing the
regular immigration route of the Jewish Agency.
As always, it seems that when it comes to supporting the needs of the
settlement movement, at the end of the day, the sky is the limit, including
a crash course of 12 working days in how to transform from an Andes Indian
into a settler Jew. The main requirement is that our 90 new brethren believe
that all of the Land of Israel is ours and like their leader, the
now-Zerubavel Tzadkiya, dividends will come down the road when the children
and grandchildren, many of them, will make places like Tapuah thrive.
Tapuah, apple in Hebrew, was once considered a rotten apple by the
mainstream settler movement, a place inhabited by fanatics who adhered to
the hate philosophy of the late rabbi Meir Kahane. The community was an
embarrassment to serious Land of Israel idealists who claimed they had an
aspiration to coexist with the Arabs. That they should now be bending even
the most sacred rules to make the spirit of Tapuah thrive is a sign of just
how desperate and confused the settler movement -- and the rabbinate that is
effectively supporting them -- seems to have become.
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