I thumbed through a book about Chomsky in Barnes & Noble a week ago, and he described himself as a Jew and said he grew up in an intensely Jewish - though atheist - home. He said that wasn't a contradiction. Did you know he was a Zionist once, lived on a kibbutz for a couple months in 1953, and had planned to go there until his career at MIT took off?
I think he has a faith - Marxism - though nowadays he describes himself as an anarchist or "libertarian socialist". And his Marxist faith does have a lot to do with his attitude toward Israel, I think. For a time after it's independence, Israel was armed by Soviet bloc countries, populated by many emigrants from Russia and eastern Europe many of whom were socialists. These settlers established kittutz's and moshav's, which may be the only relatively successful socialist institutions ever established. Through the mid-50's a left-winger could suppose that Israel would be aligned with the "progressive socialist" countries of the world. Instead, Egypt and Syria and Iraq developed into Soviet client states and Israel became aligned with the west, especially the US, the great Satan for all leftists. So his turning against Israel makes sense - from the standpoint of his religious faith, Israel went astray. |
