The Case for Psychology

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
22 February '11

When Natan Sharansky published The Case for Democracy a year after the US-led invasion of Iraq, he ignited a debate about the likeliness of democracy in the Arab world. President Bush loved the book (The Economist said he was having an intellectual affair with Sharansky) and he recommended it to his aids. The idea that democracy was not incompatible with Arab culture and that its promotion would generate peace in the Middle-East neatly fitted the attempt to justify invading a country where no weapons of mass destruction could be found. But the question of whether democracy can flourish in an Arab country was both tricky and relevant at the time. With the recent upheavals in the Arab world, the answer to this question is critical.

As Israel’s Prime Minister recently observed with a well-deserved dosage of scorn, even The New York Times’ editorialists do not know what will be the outcome of the Arab revolts. Are we witnessing a repetition of 1989 Eastern Europe or of 1979 Iran? How strong is the Muslim Brotherhood? Can democracy take hold in societies with no real middle class to speak of?

Because the answer to these questions is partly speculative, the debate is mostly ideological. Liberals call upon the Google workers of the world to unite, and they accuse skeptics of being party poopers. Conservatives roll their eyes at a déjà-vu situation and accuse the Obama Administration of not having learned from Carter’s betrayal of the Shah.

While neither Sharansky, nor The New York Times or Middle East scholars can know for sure whether democracy will spread in the Arab world, lessons can be drawn from the past and reasonable guesses can be made about the future.

(Read full "The Case for Psychology")

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Let My People Go, So That They May Serve Me

Manhigut Yehudit
28 Tevet 5770
14 January '10

And G-d said to Moses, 'Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him: Thus says G-d, the G-d of the Hebrews: Let My people go, that they may serve Me. (From this week's Torah portion, Va'eirah, Exodus 9:13)

"So that they may serve Me." This small phrase turns all the modern significance that we would like to attach to the story of the Exodus on its head. On the surface, the story is made for Hollywood (and it was!): It has the good guys and the bad guys. It has Moses, the underdog leader fighting for justice who defeats Pharaoh, the strong and evil king. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, the good guys live happily ever after, the bad guys drown in the sea, justice has been done, happy end.

There is just one small problem. That is not what is written. We were not redeemed from Egypt so that we could live happily ever after. We were redeemed from Egypt to serve the King of the world. Were it not for that fact, we would have remained there.

The famous verse from this week's Torah portion, "Let my people go" became the slogan of the struggle for Soviet Jewry trapped behind the Iron Curtain. It was a great struggle to be in; the Soviet Union was the bitter enemy of the United States and what could be nicer than fighting against the evil empire and dovetailing with the ethical and enlightened Western world?

The problem is that while we adopted the values of the US, the "good empire", we omitted the all-important phrase, "So that they may serve Me." All that we remembered was "Let my people go." Let my people go for the sake of freedom, for the sake of democracy, for the sake of Zionism, for the sake of the values of the Western world. Let my people go to the Pax Americana of which Israel is part.

But we – and the Americans – are in the process of collapse because we have forgotten that our purpose is to serve G-d.

We have lost our sense of justice for our existence and as a result, arrest warrants are already waiting for our elected government officials if they dare venture into Europe's capitals. In a sense, they are right. We did not leave Egypt to enjoy the desert climate and we did not establish the State of Israel because the world lacks democracies. Without the "serving G-d" factor, there is no significance to the Return to Zion – it only creates friction in the world. As far as the nations are concerned, if we do not carry the message that the world has been waiting for, we are extraneous – even a nuisance.

The Americans had a president who looked for meaning. He was inspired by the good Jew who helped to open the Iron Curtain. "Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy, is always at my bedside," said President Bush. And so, the American Nation followed Sharansky's message. But unfortunately, Sharansky's book did not include the connection between liberty and the service of G-d. The attempt to force democracy upon Iraq failed, naturally and the defeat of America was remolded into the image of Obama.

Shabbat Shalom
Moshe Feiglin
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