2 comments
  1. I think you and your friend are speaking nonsense. The JAO existed to satisfy Soviet needs, and not Jewish needs. More russian Jews emigrated to Palestine before and during Stalin's reign than into the JAO. Many of them were socialists who saw the direction to which USSR was going. Almost all key figures of 20th century zionism were russian emigrants. As soon as Stalin died, the project flopped - but not the discrimination against the Jews in Russia which existed before, during and after Stalin's rule, and it is indeed during Stalin's rule that some of the most obnoxious fabrications against russian Jews were concocted. This experiment was tried before in a more brutal form, with the so called Pale of Settlement, and the result was precisely the same. Jews remained Jews, and still wanted to go to the place where they belong.

    As of your teacher, the answer seems to be very simple. It is as ludicrous and offensive for anybody to pronounce somebody a "lesser" Jew for not living in Israel as it is for doing so, or for venturing or not venturing into materialism, or for strictly adhering or completely rejecting Jewish religion. I will suffer none of it from the likes of Sha"s and most certainly not from the likes of anybody else. However, that is also likely not what your teacher actually said. "They are less not living here," as a quote, makes no grammatical sense in any of the four languages I speak. Either your ulpan teacher is illiterate or you are misquoting her - and if you are misquoting her, then it is more than probable that she said something far less offensive than you here claim to say. People who go teaching in ulpans are not always the best teachers, but they are almost always motivated by excitement about Israel. I have at times considered doing so myself.

    In any case, none of what you mentioned seems to be a political view. Israel is the national homeland of the Jewish people; this is not a political view subject to contention, much as the enemies of Israel would like everybody to believe, but an axiom.

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