c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, had two major goals: providing Jews with a state of their own and a national life of “normality.”

The first goal was achieved in May 1948 with the creation of the State of Israel which has successfully absorbed millions of Jews into its midst. Indeed, Israel will soon surpass the United States by becoming the largest Jewish community in the world.

Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism’s founder, succinctly defined normality: “To live as free people on our own land and to die peacefully in our own beds,” but because of Israel’s hostile neighbors, continuing wars, and acts of Arab terrorism, Israelis have never really known that kind of normal living. However, the term itself eludes a precise definition.

Is the United States a “normal” nation with the constant contradiction between its lofty principles of “liberty and justice for all” and the country’s pervasive racism that began when African slaves were first brought in chains to these shores in 1619?

Is Britain a “normal” nation with its long record of naked imperialism and systematic subjugation of millions of Asians and Africans? Is Japan “normal” with its centuries of physical isolation from most of the world that was immediately followed by a brutal militarism that placed cruel armies of occupation in neighboring Korea and China? Is Russia “normal” with its autocratic Czars, murderous Communism and the current crime-filled national instability?

Unfortunately, Israel, in its own way, is also becoming “normal.”

President Ezer Weizman will resign his high office in July under a dark cloud of financial wrongdoing. Weizman, a military hero and a champion of Arab-Israeli peace with his friend, the late President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from friends, but neglected to report the gifts.

Transport Minister Yitzhak Mordecai recently resigned his Cabinet post because he sexually harassed and assaulted several female aides. Mordecai, once a candidate for prime minister, faces three criminal charges and his embarrassing departure deprives the Israeli Sephardic community _ Jews from North Africa and the Middle East_ of a prominent political leader. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is accused of misusing public funds, and political associates of current Prime Minister Ehud Barak are under investigation for alleged violations of campaign finance laws.

Sadly, financial and sexual abuses are commonplace for many of the world’s political leaders, including American officials. But the Israeli public has traditionally maintained deep faith in their leaders and the fact that “everyone else does it” in no way softens the jolt.

But Israel is also becoming “normal”in an even more significant manner than having its political leaders misbehave. A new generation of Israeli historians is sharply challenging long-held beliefs about the Jewish state’s founding and founders.

Every country reveres those who first struggled to achieve independence, and Israel’s founding fathers and mothers like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir are national icons. Their fight for Israel’s freedom is a treasured part of the country’s collective memory bank, but the founders’ policies, programs and personal lives are now under intense scrutiny.

American historians have long been at work analyzing such giants as Thomas Jefferson. It is now clear Jefferson not only owned slaves, but he also had a black mistress who bore some of his children. Some historians assert George Washington, John Hancock and other wealthy men sought independence from Great Britain in order to cancel their large fiscal debts to the mother country.

Israeli historians are questioning whether Israel is a Jewish state that espouses a unique set of values or simply a nation with a large Jewish majority. The question is no mere academic exercise since it strikes at the core of Israel’s reason for being.

Was Israel specifically created as a restoration of the biblical Jewish homeland with Jerusalem as its capital or was it just another Middle East nation-state carved out of the British and French empires following World War II akin to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria?

I reassure my Israeli friends such vital debates are, in fact, a predictable and necessary part of a nation’s “normality.” First, there is the glorious saga of how a nation gained its freedom. In time, historical revisionism sets in and demythologizes that saga. Finally, a healthy balance is achieved melding both pride and skepticism into a strong national identity. I feel confident Israel will ultimately achieve that balance.

In the meantime, it’s certain to be turbulent before such equilibrium is established.

DEA END RUDIN