Avram Burg on Zionism, Holocaust, Judaism

by Charles Lenchner

Published December 03, 2008 @ 01:05PM PST

Avram Burg used to be an ambitious politician who rose to become head of the Jewish Agency and speaker of the Knesset at a fairly young age. And then something happened....

His latest book is The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes. It addresses the thorny nest of issues connected Zionism, the Holocaust and Judaism.

Listen to Leonard Lopate interview him on WNYC earlier today. What struck me above all was his thoughtfulness, a quality missing from most of the discourse related to Israel.

In an interview in Haaretz Weekend Magazine, he said that he is in favor of abrogating the Law of Return and calls on everyone who can to obtain a foreign passport.

Burg, who was interviewed on the occasion of the publication of his book "Defeating Hitler" said "the strategic mistake of Zionism was to annul the alternatives. Israeliness has only body; it doesn't have soul."

"Judaism always prepared alternatives," says Burg, who three years after leaving Israeli politics is now a citizen of France and a successful businessman.

"Just as there was something astonishing about German Jewry, in America, too, they created the potential for something astonishing. They created a situation in which the goy can be my father and my mother and my son and my partner," Burg says.

His book ruminates about Israel and Zionism, compares Israel and Germany, harshly criticizes Eichmann's hanging, reflects on Judaism in the age of globalization and remembers his father's house.

Burg said he started his book in mourning for the loss of Israel. "During most of the writing the book's title was 'Hitler Won.' But slowly I discovered the layer of not everything being lost. And I discovered my father as a representative of German Jewry that was ahead of its time. These two themes nourished the book from beginning to end."