Depiction of the Book of Life by unknown greek painter – Public Domain

A Dissident Reform Jew’s Yom Kippur Message to My Predominantly Jewish Facebook Friends Amidst Our Co-Religionists’ Abhorrent Genocide of the Palestinian People

Part of the U’Netanneh Tokef, Jewish High Holidays prayer composed circa the 12th century reads:

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On Rosh HaShanah it is written down, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed … Mi yichyeh u-mi yamut …

Who will live and who will die,

Who shall see ripe age and who shall not,

Who shall perish by fire and who by water, …

Who by hunger and who by thirst,

Who by earthquake and who by plague … ,” and who by [various other misfortunes]…

Who shall be at rest and who shall wander,

Who shall be serene and who shall be disturbed,

Who shall be at ease and who shall be afflicted ,

Who shall be poor and who shall be rich,

Who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted.

But penitence, prayer, and deeds of mercy annul the severity of the judgment.”

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October 2, 2025:

Each theistic American Jew born in the 20th Century or beyond who ever supported or acquiesced in (or does today) the hyper-criminal project of Zionism—the barbaric militarized mass-murderous theft of Palestinian land, property and lives by sociopathic European Jewish colonizers beginning in earnest in 1948—3 years AFTER the Allies had vanquished Nazism in WW2—ought to personally acknowledge and fervently seek atonement from God for their failure to understand what modern Judaism IS and what it calls on them to do and not do.

I very much count myself in this category and also hold my fellow American Reform Jews (I was confirmed in LA’s Reform Jewish Temple Emanuel in my youth) chiefly responsible for the terrible moral capitulation American Jewry made to Zionism during the 20th Century and beyond, which has culminated in the genocidal world-historical civilizational collapse that began in October 2023 and continues today as we fast and pray.

Here is the link to Reform Judaism’s late 19th Century restatement of modern Judaism’s Principles in what-is-known-in-shorthand as their 1885 Pittsburgh Platform: https://www.ccarnet.org/rabbinic-voice/platforms/article-declaration-principles/

Judging from the care its drafters took in crafting it and the eloquence of the finished product, this seminal text was plainly meant to restate Reform Judaism’s creed with reasonable brevity while preserving vitally necessary depth.

Of the 8 platform planks in their historic restatement, formally titled “Article – Declaration of Principles – Central Conference of American Rabbis,” of greatest pertinence is its Plank 5, which staunchly declares (in sum) that MODERN JUDAISM IS A DIASPORA RELIGION ONLY:

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  1. We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. WE CONSIDER OURSELVES NO LONGER A NATION, BUT A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY, AND THEREFORE EXPECT NEITHER A RETURN TO PALESTINE, NOR A SACRIFICIAL WORSHIP UNDER THE SONS OF AARON, NOR THE RESTORATION OF ANY OF THE LAWS CONCERNING THE JEWISH STATE.

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In a corollary statement expressing the same 19th Century Reform Jewish ethos Viennese rabbi Adolf Jellinek famously replied to a Jewish state advocate that Jews did not have any national characteristics, as such, but “thanks to their universalism they adapt and absorb qualities from the nations in whose midst they are born and educated. We are at home in Europe and regard ourselves as children of the lands in which we were born and raised, whose languages we speak, and whose cultures make up our intellectual substance. We are Germans, Frenchmen, Magyars, Italians, and so forth, WITH EVERY FIBER OF OUR BEING. We have long ceased to be true, thoroughbred Semites, and we have long ago lost sense of Hebrew nationality.

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Just so. And US Jews are Americans WITH EVERY FIBER OF OUR BEING.

Let’s now flash-forward 140 years: All 7 OTHER 1885 Pittsburgh Platform planks deftly articulate the sensibility of the vast majority of diaspora Reform Jews TODAY and dovetail with their generally non-conservative, left-liberal political, social and cultural worldviews. Eg. Planks 6. – 8. eloquently state:

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  1. We recognize in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason. We are convinced of the utmost necessity of preserving the historical identity with our great past. Christianity and Islam, being daughter religions of Judaism, we appreciate their providential mission, to aid in the spreading of monotheistic and moral truth. We acknowledge that the spirit of broad humanity of our age is our ally in the fulfillment of our mission, and therefore we extend the hand of fellowship to all who cooperate with us in the establishment of the reign of truth and righteousness among men.

  2. We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul is immortal, grounding the belief on the divine nature of human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism, the beliefs both in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (Hell and Paradise) as abodes for everlasting punishment and reward.

  3. In full accordance with the spirit of the Mosaic legislation, which strives to regulate the relations between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.

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But tragically, the staunchly anti-Zionist Plank 5 is jarringly incongruous with the nightmare belligerent Zionist Jews’ created in the 140 year interim: The sinful racist, ruinous, ruthless and sadistic colonialist occupation of Palestine since 1948 and the cruel continuous genocidal expropriation from- and oppression of the Palestinian people ever since–Palestinians who had no responsibility WHATSOEVER for the Holocaust the Nazis perpetrated against European Jewry.

In the wise old adage widely attributed to Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing.” Alas, the overwhelming but far-too-silent majority of good American- and other diaspora Reform Jews allowed villainous Jewish and Christian Zionists to succeed in creating and maintaining for 77 years an evil, genocidal Jewish majority apartheid Zionist state that NEVER SHOULD HAVE COME INTO EXISTENCE!

Lacking the resolve and gravitas of their 19th Century forbears Reform Jewish leaders gradually succumbed to what Karl Marx accurately called the inverting “power of money”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/power.htm Zionists employed to portray the maniacal immorality of European Jewish settler colonialism as moral.

Today, as the Israeli sociopaths continue to remorselessly perpetrate a genocide in Gaza of the unspeakable perverse caliber and dimensions the Nazis inflicted on Jews and others in WW2 (see https://x.com/ecjla/status/1973444160800903623) each Jewish person must implore and hopefully (somehow) merit and receive God’s forgiveness for our cardinal sins in NOT USING ALL OUR INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE INFLUENCE AS US JEWS TO END FORTHWITH ISRAEL’S EXISTENCE in an orderly way that provides for the safe resettlement of all Israeli Jews to Western countries and returns the Holy Land to its rightful owners, the Palestinian people. Otherwise our odds of God granting us another year of longevity are less than optimal.

Unhappy Jewish New Year to all.

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PS. This is an edited (and amplified) version of my message originally composed (while fasting) and posted on my main Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/eric.jacobson.562 on Yom Kippur in hopes of influencing my mostly Reform Jewish FB friends to recognize Zionism as the harebrained, abominable and genocidally evil Jewish religious apostasy that it is, and by so doing to seek and earn inclusion in The Book of Life.

The post It’s In The Book appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


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