Debate on Jerusalem's Status and Jewish Identity

We will move the American embassy to the

eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.

No. No. I was with him until he said, "The eternal capital of the Jewish

people." President Trump has the right to make whatever foreign policy he wants,

and if he feels that Miami Beach is best to recognize as the

capital of Israel, that's his business. He can do it.

But once he starts talking about the Jewish people, now he's encroaching

upon religion, and now that's my domain.

There is absolutely no political relationship between the Jewish people and

Jerusalem. It's merely a holy city.

The Jewish people don't have a capital. We never had a capital.

Countries have capitals. States have capitals.

That's the definition of a capital.

Capital, dictionary, noun, the most important city or

town of a country or region. Now, the Jewish people are not a country or

region. The Jewish people are a religious community.

And we pray towards Jerusalem, but we relate to Jerusalem only as a

holy city, not as a political capital

city of the Jewish people. And all of those overtures that

we make to Jerusalem and the yearning that Jews have for Jerusalem is only as a

holy city, not as a capital city. And because it's a

holy city, it doesn't matter who has sovereignty over

it.

Jerusalem is just as holy and just as much Jerusalem, whether

it's under the auspices of the Turks

or the Romans or the British or whoever.

It's important to know that the, the Zionists were the ones

that

started this business of the capital of the Jewish people, and

it's a idea that conflicts directly with the teachings of Judaism.

At Mount Sinai in the desert, the Torah says, the Bible says

about us, "Hayom hazé niyyés lá’am." That's when we

became a, a people. The Jewish people aren't a people because

of a

land. We're not a people because of a language.

We're not a people because of a culture.

We're a religion, and when we were deputized into the religion, when we

accepted the religion given to us by God, that's when we

became the Jewish people. We had no land, no territories.

We had no capital city. And in fact, our commentators say the

reason why God gave the Jews the Torah in a desert before

they went into the Holy Land was in order to teach them that land,

country has nothing to do with your Jewishness.

Your Jewishness is because you accept the religion.

Couple years ago, the pope went to visit Netanyahu, and,

and Netanyahu's bragging

to the pope, "This is where Jesus lived, in this land, and he

spoke Hebrew here."

So the pope corrected him. The pope said, "No, Aramaic."

And he, he... Pope was right. Netanyahu was so...

Netanyahu says, "Yeah, yeah, but he understood Hebrew."

Well, you know, maybe he did, but N- but Hebrew was n- was never

the national language of the Jewish people.

It was a holy language, just like, uh, land of Israel was a holy

land. Oh, by the way, if, if you see the clip

and you don't know which of the two

people talking is Netanyahu and which is the pope,

the pope's the one wearing the yarmulke.

E- even if we were to pretend that the Jewish people have a capital,

that would have nothing to do with whether Jerusalem should be the capital of

Israel, 'cause Israel's not the Jewish people.

Israel has nothing to do with the old Jewish commonwealth.

It's a country that was created in 1948.

When you hear the Israelis or the Zionists talk about how, uh,

Jerusalem has a connection with the Jewish people for 2,000 years, 3,000 years,

4,000 years, it's all true. But

that doesn't translate to, well, therefore, Jerusalem has to be part of

Israel. People think that Israel is some kind of continuation of a

Jewish, uh, government and... but it's not.

I- it's a completely different form of

government, completely

different values, completely different ideology,

and completely different people.

These are not religious Jews that are running the country. These

are atheists.

And yet the Israeli prime ministers from Ben-Gurion all the way up to Netanyahu

use the Bible as an excuse for ownership of the land.

Ben-Gurion, he says, "The mandate is not our Bible,

but the Bible is our mandate."

This is a man that didn't believe the Bible was given by God.

He didn't believe God ever spoke to prophets. He didn't believe it at all.

Neither does Benjamin Netanyahu.

It says in the Bible, "Watch the Sabbath to keep it holy."

Netanyahu doesn't refrain from work on the Sabbath.

It says not to eat non-kosher food in the Bible. Does Netanyahu do th-... No.

There is nothing holy in the Bible that Netanyahu cares about.

The only thing he cares about is his land.

Restorationist, uh, Protestants, we call them Evangelical Christians today,

they existed hundreds of years before any Jewish Zionist was

ever born. And because the Evangelicals, the

Restorationists, had great influence in Britain,

and Britain had the

mandate, the Zionists very, very much adopted the

Christian Evangelical interpretation of the Bible,

and that's what they use today. You'll find that Benjamin Netanyahu

sometimes even

espouses Christian Evangelical interpretations of the Bible over the

Jewish ones. A number of years ago, Netanyahu spoke at the site of the

Auschwitz

concentration camp, and he mentioned a prophecy in the Book of

Yechezkel about how the prophets saw dry

bones rising from the ground and growing flesh and becoming live

again. And Netanyahu said that that prophecy is fulfilled with the state

of Israel, 'cause the Jews were dry bones, and now they grew flesh, and

they're, they're real people again.

This interpretation is not found anywhere in any Jewish

source, because in Judaism,

this is impossible. But for over a century,

this has been a Christian Evangelical interpretation.

The Zionists, when they talk about the Bible,

they're not talking about

the Judaic version of Judaism and

Jewishness. They're talking really about the Christian

Evangelical version.

Netanyahu has no right to claim that

his state is mine.

I was born in America. My father was born in Poland.

My mother's family's from England. We have nothing to do with Israel.

We're Jews. We're observant Jews. We're religious Jews.

I wear a yarmulke. Netanyahu doesn't.

I keep the Shabbos. Netanyahu doesn't.

And Israel is not my nation-state in the slightest.

This is a, a unilateral claim of the Israelis, of the

Zionists, and it's an assault on my religion.

So, too, the claim that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish

people, because it transforms the Jewish people

from a religious

identity

to a national identity, to a political identity.

And it's an assault on my religion when Netanyahu says

that because Jerusalem is so connected to the Jewish

people, therefore it must be part of the state of

Israel.

Jerusalem's holiness, Jerusalem's value to the Jewish people has

nothing to do with who owns it, and it certainly

has no reason to be part of the state of Israel.