A Return to Core Values
An opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post for January 17 by David Klahr principle at Ankori High School in Tel Aviv. Suggests Israeli politics has somehow lost its way and with it, the younger generation jaded by the moral bankruptcy of our leaders and their fellow Knesset members. He calls for Israeli politics to return to the core, humanistic values.
He goes on to write that “over the last two years, what was once considered core values have been eradicated and ground into the dust. I am not referring to democracy or human rights, but to values such as truth, honesty, trust and promise.”
All very commendable thoughts but like so many Jews in Israel and the Diaspora David Klahr has misunderstood his own premise.
Of course, political leaders are no longer to be trusted and society is the worse for it but when were they ever to be trusted. However, we will not find the cause of our youth’s malaise in a bankrupt political system and a return to truth, honesty, trust and promise, who’s truth, honesty, trust…these values are subjective and open to a myriad of personal interpretation and the changing social norms of society.
What we are seeing in the breakdown of Israeli society is the culmination of seventy-four years of state-sponsored efforts to dismantle and discredit authentic Judaism and replacing it with humanist universalism.
We are teetering on the edge of a social and moral cesspool, wherein lies all the moral corruption, filth and perversion of sacred values and the ignorant cry for humanist principles that are at best shallow, and at worst nonexistent and history has proven they don’t work.
And we wonder in disbelief how the cynicism and bankruptcy of the political system in Israel has come about. Look no further than our schools and secular teaches who wouldn’t know the first thing about authentic Jewish thought.
When will this rot stop when we Jews cease supping as beggars at the table of materialism and western values that offer nothing and eventually takes everything of true value and flushes it down the cultural lavatory.
A return to core values, yes but first we must reject the empty values inherited while living 2,000 years of exile away from our Holy country.
Then we can start to eradicate the guilt and self-hate, destroying the moral conscience of Jews not just in Israel but everywhere
