The Hamas-Israel War In Light of My Conversion From Judaism to Catholicism

From Russia to Israel

I was born just before the Second World War in Soviet Ukraine, in Kiev, the only child of a Jewish family. My Ukrainian family left the misery and illiteracy of the Ukrainian province when my father obtained a Soviet army’s modest commandment and my Mother a teaching position.

Then came the War. Four men of our big family served in the Army and died. My mother, grandmother and I were saved by the state in the far East, in honor of my father. Many of our relatives were killed by the Nazis during the occupation of Kiev because they were Jews who had no members of their family serving as commanders in the Army.

I was raised as an only child and a Soviet atheist, not knowing anything about God or Jewish History. Everything I learned about being a Jew, I learned from my mother who only spoke when I told her about a boy who was abused on the street because he was a Jew. When I asked what it meant, I was given no more information.

As a brave communist and also a Jewish boy, I learned well, especially after we had moved to Moscow. At the end of the school,  I became a member of the Mathematical University club and
entered Moscow University. There I met new acquaintances and friends, in particular, sincerely believing Russian Orthodox boys and girls. After many new readings, I learned something specifically Russian and tragic about God and History — about the great massacres committed by Communists among Russian Orthodox. Being a student who was 22 years old, I asked for baptism by priest of a small and quiet Moscow parish. Fortunately, I was not denounced. During this time in my life, I was a doctoral student who was married with children,

For the next 17 years, I lived in Moscow, finishing University and working in an Academic Institution and always being secretly Russian Orthodox, open only to close friends and refusing for this reason to emigrate as a Jew when this became possible. But in the year 1978, everything changed: The Secret Service had discovered me and I was labeled a religious dissident. I was sent to Israel, without money, a passport, or my books.

My practice as a religious Christian left me with a lot of questions, which had no answers. The only new discovery of Catholic origins was through many homemade, samizdat books. I was reading a history of the Fatima appearance of Our Lady. This gave me a partial vision of the foreign Christianity’s knowledge of Mary who had predicted at the moment of its world appearance the
Russian catastrophe.

Being in Israel, was a tremendous discovery about the Jewish life and faith. I was absolutely impressed, and for one year entered a Yeshiva in the territories liberated in the war of 1968; it was construed by an American Rabbin and was helped by a Palestinian with anything related to the economy.

I was a man of 40 and had comrades of 17 as I learned about the Jewish faith. After one year of intense preparation in Hebrew and texts, I could study the Talmud with friends (havruta) and entered Jerusalem University as a mathematician.

I lived in Israel for five years, from 1978-1982, extremely happy that, unexpectedly, I had found MY country and many serious religious friends.

My Life in Israel

However, living in Israel was not easy. At the beginning of the second year, as a Russian dissident
who understood just a little bit of Israeli reality, I found it troubling not to protest about the things which I perceived as important and wrong. For example, the obligatory service of girls in the army was very disturbing for me. When learning in Yeshiva’s first year, I was free, but starting my work
at University, I was invited to join the Army — and I protested by refusing to pass the medical exam until the girls would be free to choose. Three times I was accompanied by police to the medical office of the Army, but to no avail; I continued to refuse to join the army.

The main problem for me about Israeli life was the perspective of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which was started by the Camp David Accords in September 1978, a month before my arrival in Israel.  The peace treaty between the Israeli Prime Minister and the Egyptian President was witnessed by the American President Jimmy Carter. Then in 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in which Israel agreed to withdraw from the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula. Israel subsequently withdrew in several stages, ending on 26 April 1982, several months before I left Israel for France.

It was more than forty years ago and it is extremely difficult to imagine and to judge the quality of this ‘peace’ during our recent Israel-Hamas war.

When I was forced by the Soviets to go to Israel, I knew nothing about its history, excluding the 6th-day war of the year 1967. This knowledge was only because our Academic Institute had invited a member of the Communist Party Central Committee to speak to all intellectual workers of the Institute about the 6th-day war. This was a tremendous experience for me and my colleagues; the exposition was absolutely sincere and open, with a clear presentation of Egypt’s dependence on Soviet military forces, with Soviet tanks, planes, artillery, Soviet military administration and councils. It was a covertly enthusiastic description of Israeli Military capabilities and, without telling this, of Divine final victory. This was the only real description of Israel and its relationships with God, which nurtured my understanding of Israeli and Divine might.

Intuitively, my reaction to this perspective of peace with Egypt was absolutely negative and. with time, this reaction would be confirmed. You will notice on a map of Israel, the gigantic Sinai space which became home to a serious military base of Israel, and Sinai settlements (which were disbanded by force for supposed peace). This time Israeli Arabs were living in an atmosphere of great respect for Israel, cooperating with Israel, receiving social liberties and seeing well their future with Israel.

What happened in Israel after this peace with Egypt?

The destructive consequences of the so-called peace with Egypt started immediately. The First Lebanon War began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) invaded southern Lebanon. By expelling the PLO of Arafat, removing Syrian influence over Lebanon, and installing a pro-Israeli Christian government led by Christian President Bachir Gemayel, Israel hoped to sign
a treaty which Begin promised would give Israel forty years of peace. Instead, Gemayel was assassinated in September 1982.

One of the lingering consequences of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was the creation of Hezbollah. On 16 December 1982, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the Sabra and Shatila massacre, covered by Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Minister of Defence, and declared it to be an act of genocide. As Prime Minister in 2001-2005, Sharon orchestrated the construction of the Israeli West
Bank barrier in 2002–03 and Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 led to Hamas manipulations and to the recent act of extreme violence.

My Life in France

My decision to leave Israel was very painful. I was not competent enough to try political interventions and I had to work and prove myself able to work in the West.  My colleagues at Mathematical University were mostly of American origins; their competitive spirit was foreign to me. So, I left for France in August 1982, with a promise of Strasbourg Yeshiva to take me with a very small scholarship, and with a future hint to find a work.

Coming to France, my family and I had Israeli citizenship. Habituated to live religiously in Israel, I was dressed as a religious Jewish man (haredi). We began without understanding French or the French way of life. I went every day to learn at Yeshiva and was waiting for a job. Two different attempts by Jewish colleagues to fix a job for me failed because I was overqualified.

Continuing to learn at Yeshiva, I went to the University dressed in a Haredi way. It was a miracle that two of the most prominent professors of mathematical faculty knew about my work in Russia; they started enthusiastically helping me. With the aid of a professor of University administration, they organized a course in English for some advanced students on the Russian topic, which was missed at the University. They prepared me for entry into the CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), a universal Institut present in all French Universities. In the summer I went to Paris and in October 1983 I was accepted into Strasbourg University as a senior researcher. I continued to learn sometimes at Yeshiva.

A Trip to Fatima

Even though I was completely satisfied with my Jewish religious life, there remained a dream about Jesus and Mary of my past Russian Orthodox existence.  Thanks to a homemade booklet I read in Moscow, I had an everpresent image of Fatima stuck in my mind.  So in September 1985, I took the
invitation of the VII Latin Mathematical Congress, Coimbra, Portugal, with a small mathematical exposition of mine, and went there by train, through France and Spain from Strasbourg to Portugal.

In Coimbra, there was (and always is) the Convent of Carmelite Sisters, where Sister Lucia took part until her death, but of course, I couldn’t see her there. It was an amazing voyage to Fatima and I bought books there.

I Became Catholic in Canada, Ten Years Later

Before I chose Montreal, Canada as my destination for my sabbatical year, I went through different experiences and studies but preserved my external life as a Jewish religious man. The destination was carefully chosen: America was the best place professionally, but I was preserving the French atmosphere of life in Montreal.

After finding a good place in a French-speaking University with family life in the English-speaking Jewish Orthodox community, I was attracted to Montreal because it was a Catholic French-speaking place. I became a disciple of a Catholic priest, ancient Supérieur générale of Jesuits of Québec. It was the last of the original generation of priests before the destructive self-revolution of sisters and priests of Quebec. I returned to France as an openly serving Catholic.

Now I was and still am, absolutely free to talk about any important affairs in my life and in the world on the basis of my faith and my wisdom. Of course, there is a risk in it because there is always a possibility of making mistakes, but I’m ready to accept any correction.

Back to the Hamas-Israel War

This is now a critical situation for Israel. It is a little country with many deadly enemies, with no evident reasons to live separately, fully dependent on all vital things from the United States of America — in armor, Jewish money, and forms of life. This was provoked by the peaceful decision of President Jimmy Carter in response to the supplications of the President of Egypt.

The current enemy of Israel is ridiculous; it is an abandoned, poor area which is aided by Israel.
This Palestinian community of two million with a very small, hidden and terrorist leadership which is provoking the war. Yet it cost Israel 1500 victims and 203 kidnapped persons. Never before have we seen such a number of victims!

I am not alone in my analysis. For more than 11 years, Josh Paul, who has worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs of the USA, said in his LinkedIn post that he resigned due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel. “Let me be clear”, Paul wrote,

Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups
such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not
in the long term American interest. This Administration’s response — and much of Congress’as well — is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia.

This means that my personal analysis makes sense: forty years were necessary to transform the Palestinian community which is minuscule in numbers and territory into a mortal enemy of Israel, with its Hamas leadership sophisticated in manipulating the will of this community, in the preparedness of military deal, in the choice of the moment to attack.

And now Israel, instead of the public recognition of its faults and miscalculations, is pushing
on this mortal enemy with all its military power and international authority — and almost not touching Hamas!