Hayim Greenberg - Response To Gandhi

Response To Gandhi

When Gandhi encouraged Jews in Nazi Germany to take a course of non-violence and let themselves be killed, there were many Jewish responses, most notably Martin Buber, but also Greenberg.

He argued that just as Gandhi fought for civil rights and to change the Indian caste system by law, so too the Jews in Europe should not accept legal discrimination.

"We Jews strive to redeem ourselves from our state of "untouchability". We seek bread, work, freedom and human dignity... Zionism is not only a movement for the hungry and persecuted. It draws to itself increasing numbers of courageous Jews even in those countries which are free from brutal anti-Semitism and where Jews are not stigmatized as "unclean"."

On the charge of colonization in Palestine, he responded: "In recent history, Zionism is the first instance of colonization free from imperialist ambition or the desire to rule any part of the population."

You have to fight the "Do that which is in your power to end the venomous anti-Jewish propaganda amid the millions of Mohammedans in India."

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