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The PLO's Defense of the Talmud
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 November 2018
Abstract
In 1970, the PLO Research Center in Beirut published a book that challenged what it considered to be common Arab misconceptions and prejudices concerning the Talmud. In analyzing this book, this article poses three questions. The first concerns motivation: What led the PLO's think tank to engage a researcher with the task of learning and writing about the Talmud? Second is the question of sources: How did the PLO researcher find his information and what does the presence of these sources on the PLO Research Center library's bookshelf tell us about the world of PLO intellectuals in late 1960s Beirut? Finally, what can be learned from the conclusions the researcher drew about the relationship between the Talmud and Zionism and between Judaism and Jewish nationalism? The article concludes with a reflection on the continuing debate over the place of antisemitism in the PLO.
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Footnotes
I first discussed the text under analysis here, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, at the Arab Jewish Texts conference in March 2014 at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago. I am grateful to Orit Bashkin and Walid Saleh for the invitation and to the other participants for their helpful questions; I am especially grateful to Hillel Cohen and Michael Sells for their early encouragement for this project. I presented aspects of this article at Derek Penslar's Oxford Seminar in Modern Israel Studies in 2015 and on a panel about the reception of the Talmud at the Association for Jewish Studies in 2016. For their critical feedback on various versions of this article, I thank Salah Ghanem, Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Ethan Katz, Alexander Kaye, Nadirah Mansour, and the anonymous AJS Review readers. I have followed AJS Review guidelines in transliterating Hebrew and International Journal of Middle East Studies guidelines for transliterating Arabic.
References
1. Denunciations of the Talmud by Palestinian and other Arabs were certainly also of concern to Israeli scholars and advocates at the time. See, for example, Harkabi, Yehoshafat, Arab Attitudes to Israel, trans. Louvish, Misha (New York: Hart, 1972), 204Google Scholar, 243, 248, 271–76.
2. I discuss Razzouk in further detail below. For more on his background, see the “Asʿad Razzuk” entry in Hamada, Muhammad ʻUmar, Aʻlam Filastin: min al-Qarn al-Awwal hatta' l-Khamis ʻAshara Hijri, min al-Qarn al-Sabiʻ hattaʼ l-ʻIshrin Miladi, vol. 1 (Damascus: Dār al-Qutaiba, 1985), 316–17Google Scholar. For obituaries, see al-Watan al-ʿArabi 1569, March 18, 2007, 56; and “al-Mahatta al-Akhira: Asʿad Razzuk al-Mufakkir al-Istithnaʾi,” January 11, 2008, http://www.addustour.com/14900/3%+المحطة+الأخيرةA+اسعد+رزوق+المفكر+الاستثنائي.html.
3. On Anis Sayegh, see his autobiography, Anis Sayigh ʿan Anis Sayigh (Beirut: Rīyāḍ al-rīs li-l-kutub wa-l-nashar, 2006). See also Shebib, Samih, al-Dhakira al-Daʼiʻa: Qissat al-Masir al-Maʼsawi li-Markaz al-Abhath al-Filastini (Ramallah: Muwāṭin, 2005)Google Scholar; Shebib, Samih and Hut, Bayan Nuwayhid, Anis Sayigh wa-l-Muʼassasa al-Filastiniyya: al-Siyasat, al-Mumarasat, al-Intaj (Ramallah: Muwāṭin, 2010)Google Scholar.
4. The book is tentatively titled Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO's Research on Judaism and Israel. On “knowing the enemy” as a primary goal of the PLO Research Center, see, e.g., Anis Sayegh's forewords to al-Abid, Ibrahim, al-Mabay: Al-Hizb al-Hakim fi Israʾil (Beirut: PLO Research Center, 1966), 7Google Scholar, and Sayegh, Anis, ed., al-Fikra al-Sahyuniyya (Beirut: PLO Research Center, 1970), 7Google Scholar.
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9. Assʿad Razzouk, “Die Ansätze zu einer Kulturanthropologie in der gegenwärtigen deutschen Philosophie” (PhD diss., Eberhard-Karls-Universität zu Tübingen, 1963).
10. The Soncino Press began publishing its first edition of an English translation of the Talmud between 1935 and 1948 (with an index published in 1952). The second edition, including the index, was published between 1952 and 1961. The publication history can be found in Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 12–13.
11. When he arrived in New York to promote the new edition in May 1961, S. M. Bloch, the managing director of the Soncino Press of London, explained that “we are presenting this new edition of the Talmud … at a time when the world thirsts for traditional values; when present-day members of the Jewish faith need to know and understand the basic philosophies of their forefathers. It is our modest hope that by scrupulously translating this revered repository of Hebraic knowledge and ideas into the language so many know best, we will help fill this void.” See “Soncino Press Issues New 18-volume Edition of English Translation of Talmud,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin 28:88, May 8, 1961, 6. This edition, as we see here, was of interest not only to “present-day members of the Jewish faith.” On other unexpected interest in the Talmud, see Sarit Kattan Gribetz and Claire Kim's article in this issue.
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15. Achcar, Gilbert, “Assessing Holocaust Denial in Western and Arab Contexts,” Journal of Palestine Studies 41, no. 1 (2011): 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16. I learned of al-Azm's childhood connection to Razzouk when I interviewed al-Azm in Berlin on May 3, 2016. Al-Azm passed away on December 11, 2016.
17. al-Azm, Sadik, Self-Criticism after the Defeat, trans. Stergios, George (London: Saqi, 2011), 62Google Scholar.
18. Ibid., 63.
19. Ibid., 63–64.
20. It is unclear where, or if, the Research Center's library exists today. On the mysterious fate of the PLO Research Center's archive and library, see Sleiman, Hana, “The Paper Trail of a Liberation Movement,” Arab Studies Journal 24, no. 1 (2016): 42–67Google Scholar.
21. Razzouk also lists two books that he found on microfilm in the PLO Research Center's library: Nassar, Najib al-Khuri, al-Sahyuniyya: Tarikhuhu Gharaduhu Ahammiyyatuhu (Mulakhkhasan ʿan al-Insaykulubidiyya al-Yahudiyya) (Haifa: al-Karmil, 1911)Google Scholar; Jabbour, Rafiq, al-Ruh al-Sahyuniyya Qadiman wa-Hadithan (Cairo: Jarīdat al-Maḥrūsa, 1923)Google Scholar. I have not found the latter book listed in library catalogs.
22. Having apparently relied on a note about this book found in the journal al-Hilāl, Landau mistakenly deemed it “an apologia on the laws of the Talmud.” Landau, Jacob M., Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 101Google Scholar. The title is sometimes translated The Awaited Treasure, but I follow Stillman here, who renders it The Guarded Treasure. Stillman, Norman, “Islamic Anti-Semitism,” in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Horowitz, Maryanne Cline (Detroit: Scribner's, 2005), 104Google Scholar.
23. ʿAlı ibn Ahmad ibn Hazm, al-Radd ʿala Ibn al-Nighrila al-Yahudi wa-Rasaʼil Ukhra, ed. Ihsan ʿAbbas (Cairo: Maktabat Dār al-ʻUrūbah, 1960); al-Samawʼal ibn Yahya al-Maghribi and Muhammad Ahmad Shami, Badhl al-Majhud fi Ifham al-Yahud (Cairo: al-Fajjālah, n.d.). On the latter, see Perlmann, Moshe, “Samau'al Al-Maghribī Ifḥām Al-Yahūd: Silencing the Jews,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 32 (1964): 5–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24. Harb, Amil al-Khuri, Muʼamarat al-Yahud ʻalā al-Masihiyya (Beirut: Dār al-ʻIlm li-l-Malāyīn, 1947)Google Scholar.
25. Tunisi, Muhammad Khalifa, al-Khatar al-Yahudi: Brutukulat Hukamaʼ Sahyun(Cairo: Matbaʻat Dār al-Kitāb al-ʻArabī, 1951)Google Scholar.
26. Some of these sources are Arabic translations from other languages, but others were originally written in Arabic. For example, Malul, Nissim, Kitab Asrar al-Yahud (Cairo, 1911)Google Scholar. On this book, see Gribetz, Jonathan Marc, Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 221–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27. Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 111–23.
28. Ibid., 125–48.
29. Ibid., 149–76.
30. Ibid., 177–207.
31. Ibid., 15.
32. Ibid.
33. Barry Rubin has argued that “whereas Palestinians and other Arab, Soviet, and Third World audiences might not mind the expression of anti-Jewish sentiments, such attitudes would be costly among Western, Jewish, and Israeli listeners. Thus, while anti-Jewish arguments were discouraged in public and in English, they were less disadvantageous—and could even be useful—in Arabic and in private discussions of sentiment.” Barry M. Rubin, The PLO—between Anti-Zionism & Antisemitism: Background and Recent Developments, Analysis of Current Trends in Antisemitism 1 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, 1993), 3. This PLO Research Center text, written in Arabic (and not translated into other languages), defies Rubin's generalization and suggests more complexity or diversity in PLO views. Rubin at times acknowledges the lack of PLO unanimity in this regard: “There was no one consistent line in the PLO about Jews but rather a set of often contradictory views. Those in PLO headquarters, the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, and other Arab states all had different interests and somewhat different perspectives.” Ibid., 7.
34. Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 9–10.
35. On the PLO Research Center's interest in this issue, see also Gribetz, “When The Zionist Idea Came to Beirut”; Gribetz, “The PLO's Rabbi: Reform Judaism and Palestinian Nationalism.” The Research Center was not alone in its interest in the question of the relationship between Judaism and Zionism. This was and remains a topic of interest and historical investigation in the fields of Jewish studies and Israel studies. The modern Jewish philosopher David Novak has recently argued that “Zionism needs to be thought of and formulated as a specific manifestation of Judaism in general in and for the modern world.” Having found Herzl's political Zionism and Aḥad Ha-ʿam's cultural Zionism (both purportedly “secular”) to be problematic, Novak contends that “it would seem, the only cogent kind of Zionism to be developed is ‘religious,’ stemming from a (sic) some kind of theological-political Jewish worldview.” See, inter alia, Almog, Shmuel, Reinharz, Jehuda, and Shapira, Anita, Zionism and Religion (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999)Google Scholar; Salmon, Yosef, Religion and Zionism: First Encounters (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2002)Google Scholar; Novak, David, Zionism and Judaism: A New Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 84–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36. On the American Council for Judaism, see Kolsky, Thomas A., Jews against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism, 1942–1948 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Ross, Jack, Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2011)Google Scholar.
37. See Gribetz, “The PLO's Rabbi: Reform Judaism and Palestinian Nationalism.”
38. Singer, Richard, “Excerpts from ‘The Role of the Minority in Jewish Experience,’” Issues 13, no. 2 (Spring 1959): 43–44Google Scholar. Cited in Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 211.
39. Hertzberg, Arthur, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959)Google Scholar.
40. Anis Sayegh, ed., al-Fikra al-Sahyuniyya. On this text, see Gribetz, “When The Zionist Idea Came to Beirut.”
41. Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 211.
42. Ibid., 212.
43. The Zionist Idea was published in 1959, two years before the new edition of the Soncino.
44. Literally: making more descendants.
45. Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 212–13.
46. Ibid., 213.
47. Ibid., 214.
48. Ibid., 215.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 216. Here, Razzouk is translating from the English translation of Hess's Rome and Jerusalem. Razzouk does not provide the page from the Soncino edition of tractate Sanhedrin. The talmudic text reads: “Rab said: The world was created only on David's account. Samuel said: On Moses’ account; R. Johanan said: For the sake of the Messiah” (Sanhedrin 98a; Soncino translation).
51. Ibid., 217.
52. Ibid., 218.
53. It is clear that he turned to the Soncino again here because he cites the source in the Soncino pagination: “Ketubbot 110b, p. 712.”
54. Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 218–19.
55. For an excellent recent study of Pinsker's nationalist pamphlet, see Volovici, Marc, “Leon Pinsker's Autoemancipation! and the Emergence of German as a Language of Jewish Nationalism,” Central European History 50, no. 1 (March 2017): 34–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56. As Leo Strauss wrote, “I remind you of the motto of the most impressive statement of political Zionism: Pinsker's Autoemancipation, written in the eighties of the last century. Pinsker's motto is: ‘If I am not for myself, who will I be for? And if not now, when?’ That is: do not expect help from others; and do not postpone your decision. This is a quotation from a well-known Jewish book, The Sayings of the Fathers; but in the original, something else is said which Pinsker omitted: ‘But if I am only for myself, what am I?’ The omission of these words constitutes the definition of pureblooded political Zionism.” Strauss, Leo, “Why We Remain Jews (1962),” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, ed. Green, Kenneth Hart (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 318Google Scholar. Three years later, Strauss repeated this observation, contending that what he called “strictly political Zionism” involved “a profound modification of the traditional Jewish hopes—a modification arrived at through a break with these hopes. For the motto of his pamphlet Pinsker chose these words of Hillel: ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if not now, when?’ He omitted the sentences which forms the center of Hillel's statement: ‘And if I am only for myself, what am I?’” Leo Strauss, “Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion (1965),” in Green, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, 142.
57. Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 221.
58. Ibid. Compare to Hertzberg, Zionist Idea, 185.
59. Hertzberg, Zionist Idea, 185; Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 221.
60. Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 221.
61. Ibid., 221–22.
62. Ibid., 222.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., 223–24; Bein, Alex, Theodore Herzl: A Biography, trans. Samuel, Maurice (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1941), 5Google Scholar.
65. Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 224; Bein, Theodore Herzl: A Biography, 13–14.
66. Razzouk, al-Talmud wa-l-Sahyuniyya, 224.
67. Ibid., 293–94.
68. Ibid., 294.
69. Ibid., 15.
70. See, for instance, Youssef Zia al-Khalidi's 1899 letter to Rabbi Zadoc Kahn, who passed the letter on to Theodor Herzl. Al-Khalidi, challenging Zionist plans for Palestine on a variety of grounds, begins his note by asserting his friendship toward the Jews and Judaism. “All those who know me well,” wrote al-Khalidi, “know that I do not make a distinction between Jews, Christians and Muslims,” citing “your prophet Malachi” that “we all have a common Father.” It is al-Khalidi's sympathy with the Jews that, he explains, permits him to write with candor against Zionism. Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, H197.
71. Note that al-Khalidi also contended that his opposition to Zionism was in part motivated by his concern for Jews, especially those in the Ottoman Empire, who, he feared, would be harmed by Zionism. A decade later, in 1909, one of Jerusalem's Ottoman parliamentarians, Saʿid al-Husayni, spoke of the Jews' “many important merits” that could serve as “a model for other residents in the empire,” but insisted that “both for the Jews' own sake, and for the sake of the empire and the rest of its residents,” the Jews ought not concentrate their settlement in Palestine. See Gribetz, Jonathan Marc, “Arab-Zionist Conversations in Late Ottoman Jerusalem,” in Ordinary Jerusalem 1840–1940: Opening New Archives, Revising a Global City, ed. Dalachanis, Angelos and Lemire, Vincent (Leiden: Brill, 2018)Google Scholar.
72. The full text of the English translation of Arafat's, speech can be found in “Palestine at the United Nations,” Journal of Palestine Studies 4, no. 2 (1975): 181–94Google Scholar.
73. Ofer Aderet, “Chorus of Criticism, Yad Vashem Slams Abbas Speech as ‘Fundamentally’ Anti-Semitic,” Haaretz, May 3, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/yad-vashem-slams-abbas-speech-as-fundamentally-anti-semitic-1.6052336. Earlier, Barry Rubin challenged the assumptions of this debate, contending that “the conventional debate has been about finding the PLO guilty or innocent of antisemitism, while the real issue is to clarify the PLO's attitude toward the Zionism/Judaism, Israeli/Jewish dichotomies.” Rubin, PLO—between Anti-Zionism & Antisemitism, 2–3.
74. A prolific writer on antisemitism and the Holocaust, Patterson is also the author of, inter alia, Wiesel, Elie and Patterson, David, In Dialogue and Dilemma with Elie Wiesel (Wakefield, NH: Longwood Academic, 1991)Google Scholar; Patterson, David, The Shriek of Silence: A Phenomenology of the Holocaust Novel (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992)Google Scholar; Patterson, , Along the Edge of Annihilation: The Collapse and Recovery of Life in the Holocaust Diary (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Patterson, , Open Wounds: The Crisis of Jewish Thought in the Aftermath of Auschwitz (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Patterson, , Genocide in Jewish Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
75. Of the PLO chairman, Patterson also writes, “Like his Nazi-Mufti mentor, in the words of Efraim Karsh, Arafat was a ‘bigoted megalomaniac … blinded by Jew hatred.’” Patterson, David, A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 239, 243–44Google Scholar.
76. Fishman, Joel, “Anti-Zionism as a Form of Political Warfare,” in Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, and Delegitimizing Israel, ed. Wistrich, Robert (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 98Google Scholar.
77. As Fishman puts it, “When we consider the rhetoric of the anti-Zionists, particularly of the Palestinian Arabs, it becomes evident that in their choice of terminology and language directed at the outside world they have endeavored to conceal their true purpose, which is not peace, but politicide.” Ibid., 99.
78. On the diversity within the PLO, see Sayigh, Yezid, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949–1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.
79. This sort of work conducted by the PLO Research Center defies Barry Rubin's assertion, in 1993, that there has never “been—despite its importance for the organization—anything approaching a serious study of Judaism or Zionism [by the PLO], in part because these issues pose irreconcilable problems for the PLO's doctrine and goals.” Rubin, PLO—between Anti-Zionism & Antisemitism, 7.
80. Yezid Sayigh writes, “The decision in 1966 by the director of the PLO Research Centre, Anis Sayigh, to conduct academic research on Israeli society, economy, polity, and international relations and to disseminate the results in public, the first time an Arab institution had done so, represented a direct challenge to prevailing attitudes and broke an important psychological barrier.” Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 697 n. 43. The “psychological barrier” was perhaps even higher as it related to the twin terrors of Zionism and to the Talmud. The PLO's Research Center's willingness, in these highly sensitive years, to engage with these subjects is all the more remarkable.
81. The contents of the PLO Research Center were confiscated by Israeli forces in September 1982, just as Israel invaded West Beirut. (Despite the Israeli confiscation, the Research Center continued its activities in Beirut until February 1983, when a bomb, claimed by the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners, killed twenty people and severely damaged the building.) After the Center's library and archival materials were examined by Israeli intelligence, they (or most of them) were returned to the PLO as part of a prisoner exchange, and shipped to a Palestine Liberation Army base in Algeria in 1983. Their current fate is uncertain. See Shebib, al-Dhakira al-Daʼiʻa; Hana Sleiman, “Paper Trail of a Liberation Movement”; Gribetz, “The PLO's Rabbi: Reform Judaism and Palestinian Nationalism,” 95. My forthcoming book offers further details about the story of the Research Center's library and archive once they were taken by Israel.
82. I began to articulate this argument in the short piece, “Reflections on the PLO Research Center,” that I prepared for a New York University workshop on archives in Palestine and Israel organized by Seth Anziska and Mezna Qato in 2017. I am grateful to them and to the other workshop participants for their thoughtful feedback.