L'unicité du peuple juif

Le peuple juif donne une bonne leçon au monde. Alors que les médias répètent l'antienne que les races humaines n'existent pas, que c'est le regard de l'autre qui fait la différence, les généticiens viennent d'apporter une nouvelle preuve de l'unicité et de l'altérité des Juifs.

Dans cet article du magazine juif de gauche américain Forward, on nous dévoile les résultats d'une enquête réalisée sur différents échantillons des grands groupes de population juive dans le monde.

Au sein de la race blanche, les Juifs forment un groupe relativement homogène. Un Juif italien est plus proche d'un Juif d'Irak que de son voisin de palier.

Ces résultats ne sont quelques uns parmi toutes les recherches sur la génétique humaine qui sont en cours de par le monde et qui démolissent un à un les mythes de l'antiracisme dit « scientifique ».

Pourtant, dans des pays obscurantistes comme la France, on sera les derniers à l'apprendre en raison de l'aveuglement idéologique de l'Université et des médias et des lobbies antiracistes.

We Are One, Genetically


The Jewish communal world is obsessed with the notion of peoplehood and how to define it, promote it, strengthen it — especially how to encourage younger, unaffiliated Jews to feel part of a sprawling but interconnected global family. A new scientific study may offer some help.

Turns out that Jews the world over share many genetic traits that are distinct from other groups and date to ancient times. We are, said Gil Atzmon, an assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the study’s lead author, “identical by descent.”

Researchers have already shown the prevalence of, say, a Y chromosome shared by many kohanim, but Atzmon said that his study — published June 3 in The American Journal of Human Genetics — may be the most comprehensive study of genetic linkage to date. It examined three major groups of Jews in the Diaspora: Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe; Sephardim from Italian, Greek and Turkish ancestry, and Mizrahi Jews from Iraq and Syria. Participants were recruited from the New York region, Seattle, Athens, Rome and Israel, and must have had four grandparents from the same Jewish community.

The study did find some of what researchers call “admixture,” the mixing of Jewish genetic markers with those of non-Jews, through intermarriage and conversion. Still, “the Italian Jew is closer to the Iraqi Jew than to his Italian neighbor,” Atzmon told the Forward.

Scientifically, these findings are significant because they provide a context to further study the genetic origins of disease. While there are other people with genetic similarities caused by geographic isolation — the Amish and Sardinians are two examples — the Jewish genetic connection goes beyond geography, enforced by centuries of cultural and religious isolation.

Among Jews concerned about continuity, which these days means just about anyone in communal leadership, the findings of this study raise an uncomfortable question. If a similar genetic structure bound Jews together for centuries, provided concrete evidence of a tribal connection, of peoplehood, what will happen in the free-for-all that is America? “This is a very delicate question,” Atzmon acknowledged. “Assimilation can dilute the genomic sharing among Jews. It can take a couple of generations, but [at some point] the genomic is shuffled so much, it can’t be recognized.”

In an age when exclusivity is frowned upon and multiculturalism prized, some Jews may celebrate if the genetic distinctions fade away and are replaced by a more pluralistic definition of who we are — or at least, who our genes say we are. But breaking down the cultural and religious isolation that has characterized Jewish life since ancient times also contains risks. Science tells us that we have, indeed, been one people. Will we remain so?

Etre Juif aux Etats-Unis

Avec quelques commentaires :



Les frères Coen comptent parmi les cinéastes les plus talentueux des Etats-Unis. Leur dernier film, A Serious Man, est un des plus intéressants car il offre un portrait de l'intérieur de la vie d'une famille juive du Mid-West américain à la in des années soixante.

Les deux artistes ont visiblement puisé dans leurs souvenirs de famille pour bâtir l'histoire d'un universitaire juif contre lequel le monde entier semble se liguer et qui ne parvient pas à trouver de l'aide auprès des guides spirituels de sa communauté.

La vie juive qu'ils décrivent est bien celle d'une majorité de Juifs assimilés qui, à force de vivre dans un pays qui leur est si favorable, perdent progressivement leur attachement au groupe, à ses traditions et à ses règles de fonctionnement.

Le fils du personnage ne s'intéresse pas au judaïsme et préfère la marijuana à la Thora. Sa fille adolescent rêve de chirurgie esthétique afin de se refaire le nez et paraître « moins juive ».

Le message implicite du film est que quarante ans plus tard, ces deux adolescents juifs du Mid West ont probablement épousé des non-juifs et que leur vie ne se distingue guère de celle des autres américains blancs de leur génération.

En revanche, ce que ne disent pas les deux cinéastes dans ce film à la fois intimiste et universel est que la communauté juive évolue vers une réaffirmation de soi. A chaque génération, les éléments les moins attachés au judaïsme qui quittent la communauté sont remplacés par les enfants des familles les plus orthodoxes.

A l'instar des catholiques français où les composantes les orthodoxes prennent le dessus car elles font davantage d'enfants, dans le judaïsme les éléments les moins libéraux acquièrent progressivement la majorité grâce à une natalité généreuse et à un engagement communautaire robuste.

Selon la BBC, les Juifs ne sont pas les seuls à s'adonner à la chirurgie rectificatrice. Les Arabes aussi.

Les Juifs et l'âge d'or espagnol

Certains historiens républicains hostiles à la monarchie ont cherché vainement au XIXe siècle à démontrer que les protestants étaient le moteur économique de la France et que leur expulsion après l'édit de Nantes avait conduit la France sur la voie de la décadence.

Cette idée fausse fait partie de la vaste collection de mythes qui perdurent en histoire et qui refont surface dans la presse sous la plume de journalistes conformistes. Citons à titre d'exemple, le rôle clef des Arabes dans la transmission de l'héritage antique, la mise en esclavage des Africains par les Européens, la responsabilité de l'Allemagne dans le déclenchement de la Première Guerre mondiale, etc.

Pio Moa prend à partie une autre légende, qu'il n'hésite pas à qualifier de « raciste » : celle du rôle décisif les Juifs (convertis) qu'auraient eu dans l'Age d'or espagnol au XVIe siècle. Son post n'est pas très explicite mais il rappelle que la très grande majorité des Juifs convertis s'est parfaitement intégrée dans la société espagnole.

Pio Moa, qui ne connaît de ces questions que ce qu'il lit dans des ouvrages d'historiens patentés, aurait pu ajouter que l'Inquisition n'a persécuté qu'une minorité de familles judaïsantes, celles qui ont poursuivi une pratique domestique du judaïsme sur parfois plusieurs générations.

Cette persécution était rendue possible par le fait que ces familles, souvent très argentées, vivaient avec une nombreuse domesticité qui n'hésitait pas à dénoncer aux autorités religieuses le moindre comportement suspect.

L'historien nationaliste israélien Benzion Netanyahu a écrit un livre passionnant, mais horriblement partial, sur les juifs convertis en Espagne. Il faut l'avoir lu avant de s'intéresser à ces questions même s'il faut absolument le confronter à d'autres analyses (un aperçu en anglais ici). Je constate avec étonnement que son œuvre n'a pas été traduite en France. Etonante lacune.

Pour compléter votre information, deux livres à lire :

Los Marranos españoles : desde fines del siglo XIV a principios del XVI, según las fuentes hebreas de la época

Benzion Netanyahu

Junta de Castilla y León, Consejería de educación y cultura, 257 pages, 2002


et aussi :

Crimes et châtiments dans l'Espagne inquisitoriale :


Essai de typologie délictive et punitive sous le dernier Habsbourg et le premier Bourbon : 1655-1724


Michèle Escamilla-Colin


Berg international, 2 vol. 1338 pages, 1992.

De judíos e ideologías

Los judíos conversos fueron el ingrediente alquímico que dio lugar a la Edad de Oro de España”. Buena tesis racista, pero falsa. La edad de oro española se dio en los terrenos político, militar, literario, de pensamiento, pintura, arquitectura, música, en alguna medida de la ciencia, etc. Los conversos tuvieron un papel importante, pero secundario, en la Inquisición, en la Iglesia y en las letras sobre todo. Y la mayoría de ellos se integró por completo --máxime los de segunda o tercera generación, generalmente muy mezclados-- en la tradición católica y universalista española, contraria a la idea clave judaica del “pueblo elegido” (En la actualidad ocurre algo similar en Usa, por lo que muchos judíos hablan de un “holocausto silencioso”). Castro y otros consideraban converso a casi todo el mundo de la cultura, basándose en indicios sin mucho sentido, véase “La España imaginada de Américo Castro”, de Eugenio Asensio. La teoría conversómana es profundamente racista, a su vez en el sentido de “pueblo escogido”, como la de Netanyahu sobre la Inquisición, ya tratada aquí hace algún tiempo ( Ver segunda parte de:(http://desdeelparedon.blogspot.com/2010/03/pio-moa-el-rey-ante-una-ley-delictiva.html, en relación con el libro de García Olmo). Pero ha encantado siempre a los promotores de la leyenda negra, según la cual España siempre representó la ignorancia, el oscurantismo, la barbarie y el atraso... salvo durante un período, gracias a los benditos conversos, cuya sangre judaica hizo posible el Siglo de Oro. La realidad es que en España los conversos (algunos de ellos) destacaron precisamente al y por dejar de ser judíos. Fernández Armesto es, como historiador, bastante cantamañanas (abundan en la profesión). Mucha gente pasa con bastante facilidad del fanatismo antialgo a una beatería contraria.

Marx era, más que un converso, un judío renegado (echaba pestes de los judíos), pero curiosamente trasladó el componente mesiánico y de “pueblo elegido”, de los judíos al “proletariado”, es decir, ante todo a la élite que pretendía dirigir a los proletarios.


**** Aunque llamamos ideología, en un sentido difuso, a fórmulas políticas con mayor o menor ambición de resolver problemas sociales, la ideología más propiamente consiste en un sistema de ideas que pretende entender, por la razón o la ciencia, la naturaleza humana, la historia y lo que se ha hecho mal en ella, y aportar el remedio consiguiente para los problemas y malestares humanos básicos. Por su propia naturaleza, las ideologías tienden a despreciar la religión y finalmente la moral, y a sustituirlas. Unos encuentran la causa de los males en “la explotación capitalista”, otros en “el patriarcado”, el “machismo”, “la autoridad”, diversas “clases dominantes”, determinadas razas…, y muchos ecologistas, finalmente, han avanzado hasta concluir que el mal consiste en el propio ser humano, especie de cáncer del planeta, de Gaia. Las ideologías prometen torrentes de felicidad y bienestar a sus crédulos seguidores, aunque el resultado, en todos los casos, ha sido catastrófico. Pero no hay modo de convencer a los creyentes en esta especie de religiones triviales y sin misterio. Si las consecuencias son malas, siempre se debe a no haberse aplicado sus recetas lo bastante a fondo y a la gente incomprensiva que no acaba de entrar por el aro. En el caso del feminismo, por ejemplo, los resultados están ahí, aunque casi siempre se los menciona sin relacionarlos con la ideología que los promueve: cientos de miles de hogares deshechos, aborto masivo, cientos de miles de niños criados en familias monoparentales o desestructuradas, homosexualismo agresivo, prostitución abierta o encubierta cada vez más difundida y, derivado de ellos, aumento de la droga, el alcoholismo, la violencia familiar, etc. La relación entre unas cosas y otras salta a la vista con solo que se quiera observar. Pero se niega, tal como los marxistas negaban con descaro los efectos de sus prédicas: si admitían dificultades o defectos en sus regímenes, los responsables finales eran los malvados imperialistas.

Le suicide des protestants aux Etats-Unis

Si Elena Kagan est nommée à la Cour suprême, son arrivée marquera la fin d'une époque, celle des protestants aux Etats-Unis.

Quel chemin parcouru depuis la création de ce pays, entièrement de la main de protestants. Voici encore trente ans, cette évolution aurait été tout simplement impensable.

Ne les plaignons pas. Ils ont creusé leur propre tombe.

Bon reportage de Robert Frank dans les colonnes du Wall Street Journal.

That Bright, Dying Star, the American WASP


On a recent morning at the Links Club, New York's wood-paneled preserve of the old banking elite, a small crowd of white-haired members gathered for breakfast.

The talk around the tables, over poached eggs and toast, was of Europe and sovereign-debt markets. Some were quietly negotiating deals. The crowd was mostly older, though it included a smattering of 40-something and 50-something members.

While undeniably upper-crust, the scene, which included a Latin American and an Asian, was a far cry from the Links Club of 20 years ago, when doing business was forbidden and the strictly homogenous crowd of Protestant blue-bloods spent their mornings comparing golf scores and vacation homes.

"It's changed with the times," said one former member. "That's both our gain and our loss."

In the long downward spiral of what used to be known as America's Protestant Establishment, there have been several momentous milestones: Harvard's opening up its admissions policies after World War II. Corporate America's rush in the 1980s to bring more diversity to the corner office. Barack Obama's inauguration as the first African-American president.

History may reveal another milestone—Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. If she is confirmed, the nation's nine most powerful judges will all be Catholic or Jewish, leaving the court without a Protestant member for the first time.

Of the 111 Supreme Court Justices who have served, 35 have been Episcopalians, making them the largest religious group on the court, according to court historians. The court's first non-Protestant was Catholic Justice Roger Taney, appointed by President Andrew Jackson in 1836.


Whether the court's religious makeup even matters in today's legal world has become a subject of hot debate. Yet by ushering in a Protestant-free court, Ms. Kagan is helping to sweep away some of the last vestiges of a group that ruled American politics, wealth and culture for much of the nation's history.

"The fact that we're going to zero Protestants in the court may not be as significant as the fact that her appointment perfectly reflects the decline of the Establishment, or the WASP Establishment, in America," said David Campbell, associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.

Seen from the distance of time, the changes are stunning. In the 1960s, the vast majority of corporate managers were Protestant, according to E. Digby Baltzell's famous 1964 tome, "The Protestant Establishment."

The percentage of Protestants in Congress has dropped to 55% from 74% in 1961, according to Pew Forum. The corner offices of the top banks, once ruled by Rockefellers and Bakers, now include an Indian-American and the grandson of a Greek immigrant.

In old-money enclaves like Palm Beach, Fla., Nantucket, Mass., and Greenwich, Conn., WASPs are being priced out of their waterfront estates and displaced on their nonprofit boards by Jewish, Catholic and other non-Protestant entrepreneurs.

A survey by Pew Research found only 21% of mainline U.S. Protestants had income of $100,000 or more, compared with 46% of Jews and 42% of Hindus.

Until the early 1980s, when a flood of new wealth began to democratize the American elite, the path to power and status in America was straight and narrow. It usually began with old-line families in the lush estates of Greenwich, Boston, New York or Philadelphia and wound its way through New England boarding schools, on to Harvard or Yale and finally to the white-shoe law firms or banks of the Northeast or the corridors of power in Washington.

John J. McCloy—the Philadelphia-born, Harvard-educated lawyer and banker who served as assistant secretary of War during World War II and on several corporate boards, including Chase Manhattan Bank's—became known as "the Chairman of the Establishment."

His son, John J. McCloy II, a Connecticut-based venture capitalist, says Ms. Kagan's nomination is a sign of the nation's commendable meritocracy, but also a "dangerous departure" from Establishment mores, since Ms. Kagan, while a brilliant scholar, has no experience as a judge.

"I think we're losing something fundamental with the Establishment," he said. "The Establishment was really about people who became leaders because they were confident and highly competent in their areas."

The Protestant downfall can be attributed many things: the deregulation of markets, globalization, the rise of technology, the primacy of education and skills over family connections.

Yet many also point to the shifting dynamics of the faith itself, with mainline Protestantism giving way to the more fire-and-brimstone brands of Evangelicals in recent decades. The Episcopal Church, usually seen as the church of the Establishment, has seen some of the most pronounced declines in recent years.

Rev. Mark S. Sisk, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, said the polarized landscape of religion today hasn't favored more moderate faiths like Episcopals.

"When it comes to elective office, I can't think of anyplace in the country where being a middle-of-the-road Episcopalian would be a great plus," he said.

He added, however, that tracking the ups and downs of socioreligious groups like WASPs was no longer relevant.

"That kind of calibration of 'what members of my team are on the front lines' seems to me to be an antique kind of thing to do," he said.

Meantime, WASP culture has been left to live out its days as a fashion statement, on the shelves of Ralph Lauren stores, or as a social badge at defiantly old-world clubs like the Knickerbocker Club in New York or the Bath and Tennis Club in Palm Beach.

In "The Protestant Establishment," Mr. Baltzell pointed to the prejudice and insularity of the elite as the eventual causes of its decline. "A crisis has developed in modern America largely because of the White-Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment's unwillingness, or inability, to share and improve its upper-class traditions by continuously absorbing talented and distinguished members of minority groups into its privileged ranks."

Jamie Johnson, the documentary filmmaker and heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, said he believed the destructive effects of wealth over multiple generations were also a factor.

"The generations of affluence bred a certain kind of casual, passive approach to life and wealth building," he said. "Lots of people just got lazy."

Write to Robert Frank at robert.frank@wsj.com

La mémoire juive de l'Argentine sauvée

La fondation IWO préserve la mémoire de la communauté juive de l'Argentine, une des plus importantes au monde.

Douloureusement touchés par un attentat, les fonds ont été sauvés grâce à la mobilisation de nombreux volontaires.

Afin de les mettre définitivement à l'abri, ils seront numérisé et mis en ligne.

Un exemple qui devrait inspirer d'autres communautés nationales de par le monde.

Cour suprême et équilibre religieux

Un des aspects les plus intéressants de la proposition par le président Barack Husein Obama (BHO) d'Elena Kagan au poste de juge à la Cour suprême des Etats-Unis est son volet religieux.

La population des Etats-Unis est, grosso modo, pour une moitié protestante, pour un quart catholique et pour moins de 2% juive.

Or si Elena Kagan est acceptée par le parlement américain, la Cour suprême sera composée de six catholiques et de trois juifs.

Dans un pays où la pratique religieuse a un aussi fort impact social, ce passage à la trappe des protestants est un fait majeur et démontre si besoin est que les Etats-Unis d'aujourd'hui ne correspondent plus à la réalité humaine et aux rapports de force du siècle dernier.

Dans les colonnes du Boston Globe, Lisa Wangsness a écrit un intéressant article sur cette question sans pour autant tirer des conclusions qui entreraient dans le non-dit de la société américaine.

A moment of history: Kagan's confirmation would mean no Protestants on Supreme Court

President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court represents a turning point in American religious history: If Kagan is confirmed, the high court will not have a single Protestant member.

Just over half of all Americans are Protestant, while less than one-quarter are Catholic and just 1.7 percent are Jewish, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's US Religious Landscape Survey. But, if Kagan is confirmed to the bench, the nation's highest court -- dominated by Protestants for most of its history -- will be made up of six Catholics and three Jews.

"This whole project of a Protestant America is really going under, and it's going under quickly," said Stephen Prothero , a professor of religion at Boston University and author of "God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World -- and Why Their Differences Matter.

Kagan's nomination, he said, "is an important moment of saying, 'Look, we've gone so far beyond the idea that this is a Protestant country that we can have a court with six Catholics and three Jews."

Martin E. Marty , professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, said that these days, the question of whether there should be a distinctly Protestant voice on the court would elicit "a big yawn" from most mainline Protestants.

"I was in an Episcopal church in Chicago on Sunday, and there were a lot of movers and shakers there -- but we didn't sit around after and say, 'How can we get one of us on the Supreme Court?' " he said.

Evangelical Protestants have been slow to embrace, or to feel welcomed by, the elite law schools like Harvard and Yale that have become a veritable requirement for Supreme Court nominees. One reason for this, some scholars say, is because of an anti-intellectual strain within evangelicalism.

"Evangelical Christianity has tended to be a populist religion that's strongly democratic -- in urging people to read the Bible themselves," said Mark A. Noll , a history professor at the University of Notre Dame. "All these are traits that have positive sides, but not for intellectual preparation and education."

But Noll and others say this is changing. Like Catholics and Jews of the last century, evangelicals are increasingly realizing that they need intellectual credentials to auire institutional power in America. Influencing the high court is of special importance to evangelicals because of their opposition to abortion.

"I think the Catholics had a 20-year head start on the... evangelicals in getting more elite credentials," said Richard W. Garnett , a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame.

A half-century ago, Catholics and Jews were the outsiders in the top echelons of the legal and political worlds. But barriers to their advancement have now largely disintegrated, as both groups have made significant strides in educational and professional achievement.

"Education itself became important, with a kind of edge that was not present for most Protestant groups," Noll said.

Republican presidents, seeking Supreme Court nominees with strong educational credentials who oppose abortion rights, have in recent years turned repeatedly to Catholics.

"It's not that every Catholic justice is pro-life, obviously," Garnett said. "But if you were looking for a qualified candidate with elite credentials who was pro-life in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, you were likely to find a lot of Catholics."

Evangelicals sometimes view Catholics as their ideological soulmates -- so President George W. Bush could please his political base by nominating Samuel Alito after his first choice, evangelical Harriet Miers , withdrew from consideration over criticism that she was ill-prepared.

"There was a time that being fearful of Catholics was at the heart of Protestant culture -- that's certainly changed," said David Harrington Watt , a history professor at Temple University.

Democratic presidents, seeking Supreme Court nominees who are reliably liberal, have several times nominated Jewish justices. Bill Clinton appointed both of the court's current Jewish justices, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg .

Some scholars lament the lack of religious diversity on the court, even though justices generally shrug off the notion that religion affects their jurisprudence.

"We think through ethics and law in our lives, whether or we are Supreme Court justices or not, in light of our backgrounds and religious commitments," Prothero said. "And I think it's a pity to have only two religious traditions represented on the court."

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com

Les origine du peuple juif

Jolie photographie de deux enfants participant à un mariage juif à Londres, prise par la prestigieuse photographe Segerius-Bruce. Pour en savoir plus sur son œuvre, ici.

Dans les colonnes du Monde, Paul Benkimoun publie une intéressante recension de l'ouvrage de David Goldstein paru en 2008 aux Etats-Unis. C'est un des très rares volumes de génétique des populations traduit en français. Le terrorisme intellectuel en France sur le binôme génétique et groupes humain est tel que notre pays vit dans l'ignorance presque totale des travaux dans ces domaines. Il est vrai que les résultats des recherches mettent à bas la vulgate dont se gargarisent les groupes dits «antiracistes». Soulignons le rôle éminent que les scientifiques et divulgateurs juifs américains ont joué sur ces questions.

L'Héritage de Jacob. L'histoire des juifs à travers le prisme de la génétique David B. Goldstein
Denoël, 192 pages, 17 €.

Ecrit par le généticien David B. Goldstein, directeur du Centre for Genome Science de l'université Duke (Etats-Unis), ce livre est paru la même année - 2008 - que le livre de l'historien israélien Shlomo Sand Comment le peuple juif fut inventé. C'est peu dire que les deux ouvrages sont opposés. Sand remet en question la notion fondatrice d'un exil des juifs vivant en Judée en 70 après J.-C., après la destruction de leur Temple par les Romains, et explique principalement par des conversions la présence importante de juifs en Afrique du Nord et en Europe. Scientifique réputé, Goldstein entend "faire parler l'ADN" comme l'on dit, pour valider une tradition orale.
Il passe en revue les différences que la génétique pourrait mettre en évidence entre les populations juives et les "populations d'accueil ". En analysant les variations de l'ADN du chromosome Y, porté par les hommes, des chercheurs, dont Goldstein, ont montré qu'il permettait de localiser une origine géographique. Pas question de chercher un "chromosome juif". En bon scientifique, Goldstein sait que cela relèverait du fantasme. Mais des études ont mis en évidence le fait que "le chromosome Y des juifs est plus caractéristique des populations sémites que celui des populations germaniques ou scandinaves", commente-t-il.

En se concentrant sur le chromosome Y des Cohen, une lignée que la Bible identifie comme des prêtres descendant d'Aaron, frère de Moïse, le généticien a identifié un type chromosomique caractéristique, l'haplotype modal Cohen (HMC), qui semble les faire remonter à l'époque où le roi Salomon aurait fait bâtir le premier Temple. L'HMC "n'est certes pas l'exclusivité des juifs. Il n'est pas rare qu'on le rencontre chez 1 % ou 2 % des individus parmi des populations non juives", souligne Goldstein.

Appliqués aux Lemba, un peuple de langue bantoue vivant en Afrique australe et se considérant comme originaire de Judée, et aux Lévites ashkénazes, descendants de la tribu fondée par Aaron, les outils génétiques sont moins univoques. Chez les Lemba, le HMC a une fréquence importante, mais on ignore par quel biais. Dans le cas des Lévites ashkénazes, Goldstein n'est pas loin de rejoindre la thèse défendue en 1976 par Arthur Koestler dans La Treizième Tribu, et donne crédit au scénario d'une caractéristique portée par le chromosome Y héritée des Khazars, dont l'empire se situait entre le Dniepr et la Volga du VIIe au début du XIe siècle.

Goldstein reconnaît les limites des études s'appuyant sur le seul chromosome Y : "De mon point de vue - celui de l'historien généticien -, le chromosome Y n'est pas pertinent parce qu'il ne dit rien des schémas migratoires des femmes", qui déterminent l'identité juive.

Reste que la mise en évidence d'éléments génétiques reliant des individus se considérant comme juifs à la population de Judée peut mettre au jour des mélanges avec d'autres populations, contredisant l'idée d'une pureté de la lignée, voire conduisant à servir de base à une hiérarchisation, selon le degré de "métissage", au sein même de ceux qui s'identifient comme juifs. "Nos gènes ne sont pas forcément notre destin, et d'ailleurs mieux vaut qu'ils ne le soient pas", écrit sagement David Goldstein.

L'amiral Canaris, défenseur du peuple juif ?

Le titre est un peu provocateur, je vous l'accorde bien volontiers. Mais il s'accorde bien avec la personnalité complexe du patron des services de renseignement extérieur de l'Allemagne hitlérienne.

Comme le rappelle Matthew Wagner dans les colonnes du le Jerusalem Post, ce haut dignitaire du IIIe Reich a joué un rôle décisif dans le sauvetage du rabbin Yitzhak Yosef Schneerson, grand patron d'un des principales familles spirituelles du judaïsme orthodoxe.

Chabad: Make Nazi commander a 'righteous gentile'

Chabad Lubavitch presented a request Monday to Yad Vashem to recognize a high-ranking military commander in the Third Reich as a righteous gentile for saving Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef Schneerson, the sixth Chabad rebbe.

Admiral Canaris, commander of the Nazi Abwehr, or intelligence, had a central role in securing Schneerson's escape from the Warsaw Ghetto along with members of Schneerson's family and entourage, said Yosef Kaminetzky, a writer who recently completed a book on the escape story.

Kaminetzky, along with Kfar Chabad secretary Rabbi Binyamin Lipshitz sent a letter of request to Yad Vashem to consider Canaris as a candidate for righteous gentile status.

"He saved the rebbe, why shouldn't he be recognized as a righteous gentile?" said Kaminetzky, explaining why it was important to Chabad.

"What makes Canaris even more worthy of praise is the fact that he came from the Nazi leadership."

However, Dr. Ephraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center in Israel called Chabad's request "problematic."

"It smacks of a certain particularism," said Zuroff in a telephone interview. "It is not fair to judge Canaris by a specific good deed when at the same he was in the upper hierarchy of the Third Reich."

A Yad Vashem spokesperson said that since they had not yet received an official request they could not comment on the Canaris issue.

Chabad's effort was based on new information revealed by historian Danny Orbach, the author of a new book in Hebrew entitled Valkyrie -German Resistance to Hitler.

Orbach, a doctoral student at Harvard University of modern Japanese history, said he has devoted the last six years to researching German opposition to the Nazi regime.

Orbach said that in 2002 he issued a request to Yad Vashem that was later rejected to recognize Canaris as a righteous gentile.

Orbach said that Yad Vashem's rejection of the request was based on two claims: first, that Canaris did not risk his life to save Jews, rather he used his authority as a commander; second that Canaris helped the war effort and did not oppose it.

"For the sake of historical justice I believe Canaris should be recognized as a righteous gentile," said Orbach.

"I have proof that he did risk his life to save Jews and that he also actively attempted to hurt the Nazi war effort by convincing Franco the Spanish dictator not to join the Nazis."

Another request presented by Orbach in 2002 was accepted. Canaris's aide Hans von Dohnanyi, who acted on Canaris's behalf, was named a righteous gentile in 2003.

Both Von Dohnanyi and Canaris were executed by the Nazis.

Canaris was executed in the last days of the war after it was discovered that he had tried to assassinate Hitler.

He was hanged naked by SS guards on April 9, 1945 together with Hans Oster, deputy head of the Abwehr under Canaris, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian who opposed the Nazi regime.

Un effort commun

Jésus devant son juge juif.

Dans le dialogue entre le catholicisme et le judaïsme, une des revendications les plus permanentes des Juifs est la modification des prières et textes rituels catholiques appelant à la conversion des israélites ou les blâmant pour la mort du Christ.

Depuis Pie XII, l'Eglise a répondu favorablement à ces demandes et a largement modifié les prières dans le sens demandé par la communauté juive.

En revanche, le judaïsme ne semble pas percevoir qu'il pourrait lui aussi faire preuve d'un peu plus de sensibilité à l'égard des catholiques et prendre ses distances quant aux textes talmudiques les plus férocement antichrétiens.

Dans l'hebdomadaire juif Forward, Jay Michaelson a écrit un remarquable article sur cette question difficile et sur l'attitude des Juifs à l'égard d'un des leurs, le Christ.

Do Jews Have a Jesus Problem? The joke, if that’s what it is, goes like this: “You’ll have to forgive us Jews for being a little nervous. Two thousand years of Christian love have worn down our nerves.”
Shalom Rabbi: Jesus sits before Caiphas, the Roman-appointed Jewish high priest.
That says it all, doesn’t it? The scars of antisemitism and missionary activity, the pathos-drenched sense of humor, the contempt for Christianity — this is certainly how I regarded our local majority religion as I was growing up. When I was a child, Christianity was like the big, stupid bully: at once idiotic, and overwhelmingly powerful. Couldn’t they see how ridiculous their religion was? A virgin birth? Santa Claus? An Easter Bunny? A messiah who got killed, but actually died for our sins? And yet, these were the people running our country, telling us which days we get off from school and which we don’t, and playing their insidious music every winter.

If the books the Forward receives for review are any indication, I am not alone in my neurosis about Yeshu ben Yoseph. Though nothing, it seems, will match the never-ending torrent of books about the Holocaust, these past few years have seen a small mountain of Jesus books arrive on my desk, most of them not worthy of review. Screeds about how Jesus got Judaism wrong, or how Christians got Jesus wrong, or how much better we are than they are — these are books my younger self would have written.

Surely, some of the Jesus fad is due to the success of David Klinghoffer’s 2005 book, “Why the Jews Rejected Jesus.” (Answer: We’re the chosen people — a nation, not universalists.) But I think a lot of it is also due to our increased confidence as an assimilated minority in the United States. Where once we could have been tortured or burned for not accepting Christ, now we can publish books criticizing him.

It was not always thus. Indeed, the texts discussed in the best book of the recent crop, Peter Schafer’s “Jesus in the Talmud,” were once considered so outrageous that they were self-censored from European editions of the Talmud. Not that the attempt succeeded: Christian authorities burned the Talmud anyway, and antisemitism continued unabated. But the censorship did succeed somewhat; these texts are practically unknown even today.

And they are still somewhat scandalous. What Schafer shows is that the rabbis of the Talmud knew the New Testament well enough to parody it and were concerned enough about the growth of the Jewish-Christian sect to condemn the testament. And they did so in unsparing terms.

The image of Jesus that one gets from the Talmud is that of an illicit, sex-crazed black magician who uses trickery to lead Israel astray. In BT Sanhedrin 103a, Jesus is depicted as a poor disciple who “spoiled his food,” which Schafer speculates may be a euphemism for sexual misconduct: “to eat the dish” being a recognized Talmudic euphemism known for the sex act itself. A later emendation adds that he “practiced magic and led Israel astray.” And the virgin birth is ridiculed as a cover-up of Jesus’ true parentage: His mother was an “illicit woman” (another Talmudic locution), perhaps even a prostitute.

Strong stuff — no wonder they don’t teach it in Sunday school. But fascinating, as well, as long as, of course, we don’t take it too seriously (which, doubtless, some Jews do). The texts Schafer adduces — all of them relatively late, dating to the third- or fourth-century C.E., suggesting a conscious effort to fight the upstart sect — show that the Talmudic rabbis did not reject Jesus for the noble reasons that Klinghoffer and his ilk suggest. At least according to these texts, they rejected him because they thought he was evil, or saw him as a threat.

The most notorious of all the “Jesus texts,” however, is BT Sanhedrin 43a, which describes the halachic procedure of Jesus’ trial and execution. This is notorious, of course, because for nearly 2,000 years, Christian authorities have been blaming the Jews for killing Jesus, even though the New Testament itself makes clear that it’s the Romans who actually did the deed.

Shockingly, however, the Talmud does not shirk responsibility for Jesus’ death. On the contrary, it says that he deserved it and that the Jews did it themselves. Jesus was, the text relates, a sorcerer, an idolater and a heretic who led Israel to idolatry. His conviction was entirely just, and his execution — stoning and then hanging — was carried out in strict accordance with rabbinic law.

Why would the Talmud make such a claim? Schafer speculates it is to undermine the Gospels’ account and empower the rabbis. In the Gospels’ account, the rabbis are tools, almost, of Rome. In the Talmud’s account, they are powerful — so powerful that they condemned the hero of the Christian sect to his brutal death. (Believe it or not, there are actually even more graphic texts, which Schafer includes in his book. Suffice to say, their gruesome account of hell puts even Dante to shame. But I’ll leave that out of this family newspaper.)

What’s fascinating about reading these texts together with Schafer’s careful and thorough commentary is that the ambivalence about Jesus, which I experienced as a young man, seems to be already in place back in the fourth century. On the one hand, Jesus is beneath contempt. On the other, he is dangerously powerful. These texts were written before the church became the most powerful force on Earth, but they wouldn’t be out of place among the books I chose not to include here.

Indeed, I’m sure that there are some readers who may have preferred these comments not be published at all. The texts in Schafer’s book are still dangerous. They still might incite violence against Jews. And they threaten decades of progress in Jewish-Christian relations.

One wonders when, if ever, we Jews will be able to heal from the trauma of Christian oppression and actually learn from, while still differentiating ourselves from, Christian teaching and tradition. Along my own spiritual path, I’ve been amazed at how much I learn from the teachings of other traditions — Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Sufism — yet how jittery I get when it comes to Christianity. Yes, like many Jews, I have an appreciation for the teachings of Jesus, and I even wrote my master’s thesis on Paul and the Talmud. But this isn’t enough. I want to understand Christ the way Christians do — not to become one of them, but in order to enrich my own religious life. I want to learn from them how to have a personal relationship with a personal, humanized, embodied God who cares, and who saves. I want to experience Jesus as a human being enlightened enough to see everyone as holy, even the impure, the leprous and the marginalized. And I want to follow his example, seeing all my fellow human beings and myself as sons and daughters of God.

Four years ago, I developed some of these thoughts in an essay in Zeek magazine. I playfully titled the piece “How I Finally Came To Accept Christ in My Heart,” explaining the irony in the first paragraph. At a conference where the magazines were for sale, someone saw that title, took the entire stack of magazines and threw it on the floor, proceeding to scream at the bookseller for selling missionary trash.

Well, I guess you’ll have to forgive us Jews for still being a little nervous…

Quand les Juifs tournent rond

Le Israël en guerre.

Le judaïsme souriant et familial dans la quiétude des Etats-Unis.

La communauté juive de France n'est pas très représentative de ce qu'elle peut être dans d'autres pays. Je me souviens d'un incident très révélateur voici près de quarante ans, quand je suis arrivé en France. Rencontrant un condisciple juif dans une université parisienne, je lui ai dit : « Je vois que vous êtes juif. De quelle communauté êtes-vous ?» J'étais curieux de savoir s'il appartenait à une famille originaire de Pologne, d'Allemagne, des Pays Baltes ou encore des Balkans. En réalité, j'étais à la recherche de Juifs sépharades parlant encore le ladino, cette variante archaïque de l'espagnol qui m'enchante.

A ma stupéfaction, l'intéressé au lieu de me répondre et profiter de ce prétexte pour faire connaissance, a froncé les sourcils et m'a tourné le dos. Quelques jours plus tard, rencontrant un compatriote juif, je lui ai raconté le face à face manqué et il m'a expliqué : « Les Juifs d'ici sont bizarres. Si un goy fait allusion à leur judaïté, ils le soupçonnent immédiatement d'antisémitisme. »

Depuis lors, la situation a évolué. Le judaïsme français est devenu plus visible et ne cherche plus à se cacher derrière son petit doigt. L'arrivée sur la scène publique de nouvelles générations issues du judaïsme d'Afrique du Nord a secoué les vieilles habitudes.

Un blog vous aide à découvrir l'univers du disque vinyl juif aux Etats-Unis.

Hélas, à cette visibilité enfin assumée correspond des défis nouveaux, notamment la montée d'un antisémitisme musulman décomplexé contre lequel les Juifs de France sont désarmés.

Malheureusement, une des causes de cette vulnérabilité de la communauté juive face aux nouvelles formes d'antisémitisme réside en son sein. Il est encore des personnalités intellectuelles et politiques juives très en vue qui refusent de prendre en compte les changement de la société française. Au lieu d'accepter que leurs idées depuis trente ans sont en partie responsables de la situation actuelle, ils persistent à lutter contre un danger d'extrême droite imaginaire.

Pour ne pas sombrer dans le pessimisme le plus sombre, prenons le temps de sourire avec l'exposition organisée par le musée juif contemporain de San Francisco sur l'histoire de la communauté juive des Etats-Unis à travers les couvertures de ses diques.

Au départ de cette exposition, le goût des conservateurs pour les couvertures kitsch des disques de musique juive. Ce qui a commencé avec Neil Diamond et sa poitrine velue sur son album Hot August Night ou Barbra Streisand sur Streisand Superman s'est transformé en une véritable quête identitaire..

What started out as a mutual affinity for kitschy Jewish album covers-think Neil Diamond baring his chest hair on the cover of Hot August Night or Barbra Streisand in hot pants on the cover of Streisand Superman-soon became a quest for identity, history, and culture between the grooves of LPs.

Together, guest curators Roger Bennett and Josh Kun embarked on a thrilling journey, scouring the world to collect thousands of vinyl LPs from attics, garage sales, and dusty archives. Pieced together, these scratched, once-loved and now-forgotten audio gems tell a vibrant tale: the story of Jews in America.

Les conservateurs Roger Bennett et Josh Kun ont parouru le monde pour collecter des milliers de disques vinyl. Grâce à ce puzzle, ils ont été en mesure de reconstituer une ipmage originale de la vie juive en Amérique.

Jews on Vinyl is a unique exhibition based on their new book: And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost, which spans the history of Jewish recorded music from the 1940s to the 1980s, weaving an account that begins with sacred songs and ends with the holy trinity of Neil, Barbra, and Barry.

The exhibition features a soundtrack of highlights from these LPs to provide opportunities for Museum visitors to experience forgotten moments in Jewish American pop history. Much of the music is no longer available in any format and through this exhibition, audiences will have the unprecedented opportunity to explore new perspectives on Jewish identity and history through this exciting aspect of Jewish culture.

Des milliers de disques aux couvertures parfois improbables.

Guest curated by Roger Bennett and Josh Kun. They are the creators of trailofourvinyl.com and co-founders of Reboot Stereophonic, a nonprofit record label dedicated to rereleasing lost classics from the Jewish past.

Pour savoir qui est cette dame, il faut se reporter au livre des deux conservateurs : And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost, qui étudie la musique juive des années 1940 à la fin du XXe siècle.

Roger Bennett is a board member of the Academy of the Recent Past (academyof thererecentpast.com) and the co-creator of Bar Mitzvah Disco and Camp Camp: Where Fantasy Island Meets Lord of the Flies.

Josh Kun is associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America and a contributor to the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Les deux auteurs ont fondé Reboot Stereophonic une maison de disques pour remettre en circulation les meilleures productions sur vinyl.

Le mystère de la disparition des noms patronymiques juifs

Une famille d'immigrants boers à leur arrivée à Ellis Island.
Leur nom fut-il aussi adultéré ?

Une des caractéristiques de la vie juive aux Etats-Unis est la présence de nombreux noms patronymiques dont l’ancrage dans la culture traditionnelle est pour le moins tenu. Par exemple, nombre de Juifs américains ont pour nom de famille Green, une adultération du nom traditionnel allemand Grün or yiddish Grin.

Où et quand ces noms ont-ils été changés ? Il existe une légende qui attribue ces modifications aux trop zélés fonctionnaires de l’immigration américaine, notamment ceux d’Ellis Island, le principal point d’entrée aux Etats-Unis, une sorte de gare de triage pour immigrants, construite sur une île au large de New York.

Dans un article de l’excellent magazine juif américain Forward, qui est une irremplaçable porte d’entrée pour cet univers mosaïque si insulaire car à la dimension d’un continent, le chroniqueur Philologos met en pièces ces sornettes et remonte à l’origine de cette rumeur.

Un certain Samuel Forgotson, arrivé aux Etats-Unis en 1860, ne trouva rien de mieux que d’américaniser son nom en Ferguson dans le but de faire couleur locale. Il ne pouvait pas prévoir que son petit-fils Tracy allait se trouver à cause de lui dans une situation délicate. Devenu une personnalité importante de la communauté juive de son époque, il avait en charge les appels de fonds permettant à la communauté de financer d’indispensables projets collectifs. Or, il finit par se rendre compte qu’un appel de fonds signé « Tracy Ferguson » ne rencontrait qu’un écho limité auprès des Juifs auxquels il s’adressait. Pour justifier son nom et en faire un argument utile à son travail, il mit au point une histoire qu’il racontait à chaque réunion publique.

Selon Tracy, son grand-père en arrivant à Ellis Island fut interrogé par un fonctionnaire :

—Quel est votre nom ?

Et notre immigrant juif, ignorant tout de l’anglais de répondre :

— Shayn fargesn («je ne comprends pas»).

Et le fonctionnaire d’écrire dans son registre : Sean Ferguson !

Cette petite histoire faisait hurler de rire le public et permettait à Tracy Ferguson de demeurer à la tête de son organisme collecteur de fonds.

Il va sans dire que c’est faux, comme nous le savons déjà. Un détail aurait dû mettre la puce à l’oreille aux auditeurs, Ellis Island n’existait pas en 1860. Quoi qu’il en soit, répétée mille et une fois, cette histoire a fait le tour de la communauté juive américaine et donné naissance à cette légende des fonctionnaires d’Ellis Island américanisant les noms juifs à tour de bras.
—

Myths and Facts On Language

A common belief that turns out to be a myth, and an assumed myth that might be true: This is the balance sheet of my March 14 column, “Last Names, Lost In Translation.”

For believing in the myth, I have been properly chastised by Arthur S. Abramson of Mansfield, Conn., and the novelist Dara Horn. Mr. Abramson writes that he was “somewhat dumbfounded” by my account of the handling of immigrants by American officials on Ellis Island, and continues:

“The Ellis Island official did not depend simply on his understanding of a name as uttered by the immigrant. Rather, he had before him the vessel’s passenger list, which had been prepared well before arrival in New York harbor. Indeed, the lists were generally made up at the port of embarkation in Europe. Once a name was matched with a person from that vessel, the official just had to copy it from the list. The myth about the changing of names by Ellis Island officials has long been debunked in genealogical circles.”

To which Ms. Horn adds the additional corrective:

“By the time Ellis Island was up and running in 1892 (immigrants to New York in the decades prior to this were processed at a smaller facility called Castle Garden on Manhattan proper), the official apparatus was vast enough for there to be no shortage of translators for even the more obscure European languages (and Yiddish hardly qualified as obscure) — Fiorello LaGuardia was one of the more famous ones. Moreover, the immigration officials often didn’t even need to resort to translators, since they themselves were frequently multilingual in the relevant languages. The idea that immigration officers were simply overwhelmed rent-a-cops, filling out forms and accidentally turning Cohens into Kennedys on a daily basis, is a bobe mayse. What’s interesting about it is that our bobes themselves made it up, because names that were changed during the immigration process were almost always changed by the immigrants themselves. Many such changes, including the example in your column of Vaytz being changed to Weiss, most likely reflected Jewish social anxieties that we scarcely remember now, such as the desirability of a German-sounding rather than Eastern-European-sounding name. For many people, it was probably easier to blame Ellis Island for the loss of a family legacy than to take the credit themselves.”

I stand corrected by both these letters. And yet Mr. Abramson has, in a way, just pushed the question of what happened with the transcription of Jewish immigrant names from Ellis Island back to the ports from which the immigrants embarked. This is because the shipping clerks who compiled the lists of passengers in Europe, and had to deal with Yiddish speakers who did not know the Latin alphabet, would have had to make guesses similar to those mistakenly attributed by me to American immigration officials at Ellis Island, so that ultimately the same kinds of inaccuracies and mistakes would have occurred in some of them. These simply would have taken place at an earlier stage in the immigration process.

And on the other hand, the well-known joke I told in the same column about the Jewish immigrant named “Sean Ferguson” would appear to have a kernel of historical truth. Forward reader Eldad Ganin has sent me the following excerpt from a genealogical Web site called Avoteynu (Hebrew for “Our Forefathers”), posted by a researcher named Gary Mokotoff. Mr. Mokotoff writes in the excerpt, “There really was a Sean Ferguson… almost,” and tells us that the origins of the story have been traced to the case of one “Samuel Forgotson,” who immigrated to the United States in the 1860s. According to his grandson, Tracy Ferguson of Syracuse, N.Y., Mr. Forgotson settled in upper New York State, where he Americanized his name to Ferguson. Tracy himself eventually became a fundraiser for a Jewish organization. And, Mr. Mokotoff tells us:

“Tracy’s associates pointed out that his peculiarly non-Jewish name, Ferguson, might be a detriment to his fund-raising ability, so Tracy turned disadvantage to advantage by inventing a story. He told his audience that his unusual name was derived in an unusual way when his grandfather, Samuel Forgotson, arrived at Ellis Island and blurted out in a moment of panic ‘Shayn fargesn’ to the question, ‘What is your name?’ The story brought gales of laughter from the audience, so Tracy continued to use it as a warm-up introduction in his appeals for funds…. The story so caught the fancy of the public that it was passed from person to person until it became part of Jewish-American folklore.”

Although, as Dara Horn points out, Ellis Island was not yet an immigrant station in the 1860s, this would indeed seem to be the source of the “Sean Ferguson” story —and the story itself, it strikes me, may have even more truth in it than Mr. Mokotoff allows. After all, where could the strange English name “Forgotson” have come from? Isn’t it likely that this was some shipping clerk or immigration official’s private joke, made when a Jewish immigrant to the United States couldn’t remember the name he had invented for himself? I, at least, can’t think of a better explanation of it. Under the name of Samuel Forgotson, Sean Ferguson may have really existed.

Questions for Philologos can be sent to philologos@forward.com.

Le judaïsme américain se convertit

Manifestation en faveur du mariage homosexuel à laquelle participent
des employés de l'association féministe juive Jewish Women's Archives.

Forward, le magazine chic du judaïsme américain publie un article fort révélateur de Rebecca Spence sur les récentes évolutions du courant « conservateur » du judaïsme américain. Après quelques années d'une résistance pas très farouche, un grand nombre de rabbins affiliés à ce mouvement ont finalement accepté de donner le feu vert, non seulement aux rabbins homosexuels, mais aussi au mariage de personnes du même sexe.

Jeune féministe juive manifestant son appui au mariage homosexuel.

Los Angeles — In 2005, when a Jewish gay-marriage activist first pressed California rabbis to sign a statement supporting full marriage equality for gays and lesbians, only a handful of Conservative rabbis lent their names. Over the course of the past two months, however, more than a dozen Conservative rabbis here have signed on to a growing list of clergy who support gay marriage in the civil realm.

What changed in between was the December 2006 decision, or teshuvah, by the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards to allow gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex commitment ceremonies — a decision made after 15 years of rancorous argument about the issue. As a result of that long-simmering debate, observers note, Conservative rabbis, many of whom were previously uninformed on issues of gay rights in the civil sphere, did their homework and read up on the issues. Others who may have already supported gay marriage finally felt freed up to express their views publicly.

Le judaïsme américain a beaucoup de mal à résister aux idées ambiantes.

“Conservative rabbis might have been privately supportive of same-sex marriage, but they hadn’t been willing to step out,” said Denise Eger, rabbi of the gay and lesbian Reform synagogue Congregation Kol Ami, located in West Hollywood. “The teshuvah, for people who have held their own private opinions, especially West Coast rabbis, has empowered them to be able to speak more publicly.”

In California, anti-gay marriage activists under the banner of Protect Marriage are undertaking a robust campaign to put the California Marriage Protection Act, which would alter the state’s constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, on the November 2008 ballot. That proposition, if passed, would override all other legislative and judicial rulings in favor of same-sex marriage. Activists are seeking to collect at least 694,354 signatures — the number required to place a proposition on the ballot — by the state’s April 1 deadline. To date, they have raised more than $1 million for their organizing efforts. (In a related development, on March 4 the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a landmark lawsuit brought on behalf of same-sex couples suing the state of California for marriage rights. A decision in that case is expected within 90 days.)

Deux hommes, Marc et Jonathna, se marient dans une synagogue conservatrice. Le baiser rituel sous le dais nuptial.

Outside of California, 26 states have already passed similar constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. But nowhere beyond the borders of the Golden State have Jewish efforts to stem such ballot initiatives been as public or as organized, with the exception of Massachusetts.

Three years ago, an activist named Steve Krantz founded the L.A.-based Jews for Marriage Equality. Krantz, 60, was a member of Valley Beth Shalom, a 1,700-family Conservative synagogue located in Encino in the heavily Jewish San Fernando Valley. Krantz’s rabbi, Harold Schulweis, was one of the earliest Conservative voices to call for support of gay and lesbian rights; in 1992 he delivered a sermon calling for the full acceptance of gays and lesbians in Jewish life. Schulweis, however, was an anomaly among Conservative rabbis. Until recently, the bulk of Krantz’s support came from Reform rabbis, whose movement has long supported gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex unions. But the surprise these days is the number of Conservative rabbis joining their ranks.

Les deux époux, main dans la main, sous les applaudissements
de leurs familles et de leurs amis.

As of yet, Jews for Marriage Equality has corralled 92 rabbis to sign its clergy statement; 22 of them affiliated with the Conservative movement. The statement, a lengthy document affirming the right to same-sex civil marriage, calls on Jewish leaders to embrace gay and lesbian rights.

“Efforts to prevent civil marriage for gays and lesbians through legal means, such as state or federal Constitutional amendments that deprive them of the benefits and dreams others enjoy, are unjust and discriminatory…” the statement reads. “We as rabbis, cantors and community leaders committed to Jewish tradition urge all Jews to remember our heritage of justice and to recommit ourselves to not wavering on this holy principle.”

Le meilleur moment : la découpe du gateau.

In Massachusetts, an anti same-sex marriage amendment was roundly defeated in 2005, and again in 2007 at the state legislative level. Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a former Bay State Conservative rabbi who in June of last year became rabbi of Berkeley synagogue Congregation Netivot Shalom, helped organize rabbinic efforts to defeat the Massachusetts bill. Three years ago, 97 Massachusetts rabbis signed a public advertisement opposing the proposed legislation. But according to Creditor — who founded Keshet Rabbis, an organization of Conservative rabbis who support gay and lesbian equality — only seven of those signatories were Conservative. Following passage of the law committee decision in December 2006, Creditor said, many more Conservative rabbis signed their names.

Le rabbin Elliot Dorff de l'American Jewish University de Los Angeles a joué un grand rôle dans le changement d'attitude des rabbins en démontrant que l'orientation homosexuelle ne résultat pas d'un choix, mais plutôt s'impose génétiquement aux personnes. Des arguments comparables expliquent que la majorité des criminels récidivistes sont également conduits à délinquer en raison de leur particulière combinaison de gènes. Faut-il en déduire que les rabbins conservateurs américains vont abandonner le décalogue ?

Elliot Dorff, the rector of Los Angeles’s American Jewish University and a co-author of the rabbinic opinion that opened the doors for gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex unions in Conservative Judaism, said the scientific evidence that the opinion presented, showing that sexual orientation is not a choice, has been a key factor in swaying rabbis. Before the hard-fought opinion passed, Dorff said, it would have been far more difficult to convince Conservative rabbis to rally behind the cause of same-sex marriage.
“It would have been harder before the teshuvah was passed, simply because many Conservative rabbis were not aware of the scientific evidence we brought, and were not thinking about this issue at all,” he said. “What that debate did was put it on the front-burner.