Into the house of bondage: liberation theology, invented by Catholic Marxists, adopted by liberal Protestants, is moving into the synagogue.

Liberation theology, invented by Catholic Marxists,

adopted by liberal protestants, is moving into the synagogue.

But its god is history-and its Israel is Palestine.

IN AN ARTICLE published during the Nicaraguan election campaign, the Sandinista newspaper Barricada tried to rationalize the government's failure to transmit to the opposition funds appropriated by the United States Congress. It was not the government's fault, the reporter observed, but the "traditional Jew-style with which the U.S. Congress manages the taxes of the taxpayers." The following day, the publication formally dissociated itself from the sentiments expressed therein. (Ortega and company have become quite pr-conscious of late.) Still, the piece was an uncensored reflection of the anti-semitism inherent in Third World Marxism.

Thus it may come as a surprise that liberation theology-the movement's sales pitch to the spiritually inclined-has its Jewish as well as its Christian adherents. Then again, why should Christians be the only ones to get in on a good heresy, or embrace an ideology which ultimately seeks the extinction of their faith?

Formulated by Latin American theologians seeking a spiritual rationale for their politics, liberation theology has taken avant-garde Christianity by storm, making significant inroads in the main-line Protestant denominations (the National Council of Churches has become a virtual cheering section for the creed), as well as the more politicized Catholic orders (the Jesuits and Maryknollers in particular). Now it is being marketed to American Jewry under a kosher label. It is, in fact, as kosher as a roast pig, stuffed with shell fish, served on Yom Kippur.

In the past two years, the B'nai B'rith Jewish Book Club, perhaps the largest book distributor of its kind, has offered no fewer than three works touting Hebraic liberationism: Judaism and Global Survival, by Richard H. Schwartz, On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Jews and Liberation Theology, by Dan Cohn-Sherbock, and Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation, by Marc Ellis. Significantly, the latter were published by Orbis Books, a subsidiary of the Maryknoll order.

Jewish liberation theology has its own journal, Tikkun, a slick bimonthly, and its revolutionary vanguard, the New Jewish Agenda. The NJA, while relatively small (with a following of perhaps five thousand), has secured membership in the Jewish Community Relations Councils of Los Angeles, Detroit, and half a dozen other cities.

Liberationism is an attempt to merge Scriptures with Marxist dogma. The Exodus story is viewed as a paradigm for revolutionary socialist movements in the Third World. Just as God ordained the manumission of the Children of Israel from Egyptian bondage and led them to the Promised Land, liberation theology posits the struggle against capitalism as Divinely ordained. Guerrrilla fighters become the neo-Moses and the future socialist state the New Israel, to be secured after the wilderness of class conflict has been traversed.

IN Communism in the Bible (Orbis Books, 1982), Jose Miranda urges, "It is time to drop all these side issues and concentrate on the fundamental fact: the Bible teaches Communism." Also, "No one can take the Bible seriously without concluding that according to it, the rich, for being rich, should be punished." Therefore: "Communism is obligatory for Christians."

And for Jews as well, say Jewish liberationists. "The religious Jew needs the secular and socialist critique," Ellis proclaims. "And the secular Jew benefits from ideals and symbols spoken in a language that has languished."

According to its proponents, liberation theology strives for the realization of Jewish ideals: peace, brotherhood, and justice. It gives new meaning to the Exodus story, making it a metaphor for Third World liberation struggles, and attempts to actualize the prophetic vision of an era of harmony and equality. Since liberationism seeks the attainment of Jewish goals, and invokes Jewish symbols toward these ends, Jews should feel a particular affinity for the doctrine, according to Tikkun, the Agenda, and their fellow-travelers.

To one whose Torah education extends not much beyond Bible stories in English, and whose knowledge of politics and economics was absorbed at the knee of Jesse Jackson, all this might sound quite plausible. Liberation theology is, in fact, a betrayal of Jewish heritage a rejection of Halakah (Jewish law), a deadly assault on Israel, and a stimulus for left-wing anti-semitism.

As Rabbi Leon Igenicki Director of the Interfaith Affairs Department of the Anti-defamation League, explains, liberationists have distorted the meaning of the Exodus, by focusing its brilliant spiritual light through an ideological prism. Kluenicki concedes: Judaism certainly recognizes the Exodus as liberation, but maintains that the liberation from Egyptian bondage became meaningful only when Israel received the law at Mount Sinai."

"These points," he continues, "are overlooked by ... the theologians of liberation. They consider liberation an end in itself, not realizing that physical or economic oppression can only be overcome by a freedom that has transcendental meaning. Otherwise, the liberation process ends in another form of tyranny or authoritarian dictatorship."

This distortion is duplicated in the effort to make Jewish values conform to revolutionary doctrine. Unlike certain interpretations of Christianity, Judaism has never despised wealth. The Torah enjoins that property be obtained honestly, used responsibly, and shared to an appropriate degree with the less fortunate. But it has never condemned riches per se as a sign of sinfulness or censured the wealthy.

In his book, With All Your Possessions: Jewish Ethics and Economic Life, Talmudic scholar Meir Tamari, chief economist of the Bank of Israel, writes: "In Judaism, the merchant and entrepreneur play a legitimate and even a desirable role in commerce and therefore are morally entitled to a profit, in return for fulfilling their function, without need of apology."

The key to the Jewish understanding of a humane society is the concept of tsadaka. Often misinterpreted as charity, it means nothing less than justice. The mitzvah (commandment) requires the observant Jew to set aside a certain portion of his income for the less fortunate, as a matter of religious obligation.

It must be noted, however, that the commitment to give is finite. It never approaches the point of confiscation or income-leveling. In Biblical times, every third year an Israelite was required to contribute one-tenth of his income for the poor (the origin of the Medieval tithe). In the other two, the corners of his field were to be left unharvested, for those in need. Even by welfare-state standards of taxation (let alone the radical redistributionism of Marxist states), this was a modest donation.

Maimonidies, the great codifier of Jewish law, identified eight distinct levels of tsadaka, with varying degrees of merit attached to each. On the highest plane, the Rambam stated, is providing a poor person with employment or a trade, thus enabling him permanently to escape the poverty cycle.

The greatest gift to the impoverished, in other words, is helping them to help themselves. Is it a kindness to deliver Third World masses into the hands of Marxist regimes, infamous not only for their repressive cruelty but also for their perpetuation and extension of existing poverty?

But liberation theology is worse than a mere misrepresentation of Judaism. It is a complete negation of the central tenets of the faith. The deity of liberationism isn't the God of the patriarchs and prophets, the God Jews have faithfully worshipped for the past three millennia. Judaism perceives God as supernatural, the creator of all life and giver of law, the One who shapes history. For liberation theologians, history is God. When liberationist Jose Bonino states, "there is no truth outside or beyond the concrete historical events in which men are involved as agents. There is, therefore no knowledge except in action itself," he means essentially that there is no God, as Judaism discerns Him.

The God of liberation theology is the personification of historical forces which, through the Marxist dialectic, are leading us to a classless utopia. With the Party as its priesthood, this divinity is worshipped through service to the revolution. Efforts to forestall the proletarian state are therefore blasphemy, punished by temporal damnation via gulag or firing squad.

Enunciating this collectivist catechism, Father Ernesto Cardenal, Sandinista minister of culture, proclaims: "Marxism is the only solution for the world. For me the revolution and the Kingdom of Heaven, mentioned in the Gospel, are the same thing. A Christian should embrace Marxism if he wants to be with God and with men.... As mankind matures, religion will start disappearing slowly until it vanishes completely."

In this secular messianic vision, clearly there is no place for Judaism, with its insistence on a God above and outside of history and obedience to his dictates, revealed in the Oral and Written Law. Thus, while proclaiming its Jewishness, Jewish liberation theology seeks the extinction of normative Judaism.

THE CANAAM of liberation theology is a land not of milk and honey but of blood and barbed wire. Its utopian models are the Stalinist states of the Caribbean and Central America, whose dubious blessings they would bestow on the rest of the continent.

In these lands, the socialist elite prove taskmasters of surpassing severity. Hyper-inflation, rationing, gulags, the destruction of independent labor unions are ubiquitous. This is not the repair of the world (tikkun olam) but its laceration, all the more bitter as the atrocities are committed in the name of the old ideals.

And how have the Jews fared in the lands conquered by the cause liberation theology has consecrated? Nicaragua's small but vibrant Jewish community was obliterated, its members forced into exile. In scenes reminiscent of the Nazi degradation of Viennese Jews during the Anschluss, in the early days of the Sandinista junta, Jewish leaders (including eighty-year-old Abraham Gorn, the unofficial head of the community) were forced to sweep the streets. Jewish businesses were confiscated, homes ransacked, and rather convincing death threats made to encourage emigration (all thoroughly documented in a 1983 report by the Anti-defamation League, which calls Nicaragua "a country without Jews, but not without anti-semitism").

Of ten thousand Jews in Cuba, prior to the revolution, fewer than two hundred remain. The Falashas, or black Jews of Ethiopia, had to be rescued by an Israeli airlift from a famine unleashed by the nation's Marxist rulers.

In lands where the dreams of Ellis and company have been realized, Jews are persecuted for their relative prosperity. Rabbi Kluenicki, an Argentinian by birth, ironically notes this reversal of traditional Latin American anti-semitism: Anti-semitism was influential in Argentina in the 1910s and 1920s, when conservative groups accused Jews of being agents of Marxism and promoters of Bolshevik revolution. Fifty years later, followers of liberation theology accuse the Jewish community of being agents of Wall Street and American imperialism."

No examination of Judaism and liberation theology would be complete without a consideration of the creed's potential impact on the Jewish state. If Israel were to receive a fair hearing anywhere on the liberationist spectrum, it should be from its Jewish exponents. Consider then the treatment afforded Israel and Zionism by Marc Ellis.

In Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation, Ellis informs us: "A practicing Jew within the liberationist perspective sees the state of Israel as neither central nor peripheral, but rather as a necessary and flawed attempt to create an autonomous presence in the Middle East."

Necessary and flawed? The defects alluded to are Israel's treatment of the Palestinians: "A Jewish theology of liberation is unequivocal in this regard. The Palestinian people have been deeply wronged in the creation of Israel and in the occupation of the territories. As we celebrate our empowerment, we must repent our transgressions and stop them immediately."

Of what did these transgressions consist? Acceding to the transfer of two-thirds of the territory of Mandate Palestine to the Arabs? Providing those Arabs who remained in Israel with more civil liberties and prosperity than the inhabitants of any of the Islamic states?

What is to be done with such a malign, racist entity? First we must make unspecified amends to those we have wronged, including the creation of a PLO state on the West Bank. Jewish liberationists, Ellis declares, support "a Palestinian state formed by the Palestine Liberation Organization." Ellis looks forward most eagerly to a time, "perhaps a hundred years from now," when "we can speak of a confederation of Israel and Palestine and how out of tragic conflict a healing took place to the benefit of both communities." Perhaps even sooner? Israel's role in the liberationist scheme is acquieseence to annihilation, to atone for its sins against the oppressed of the Third World. An immeasurable chasm separates Judaism and utopianism in its myriad forms, including liberation theology. In their popular introduction to the faith of Israel (Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism) Dennis Prager and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin illuminate a fundamental difference of approach: "Judaism aims to solve the problems of an unjust world, but it rejects revolution as a solution since the roots of evil and injustice lie not in economics but in man himself. Consequently, Judaism is a system designed to change individuals before it and they can ever hope to succeed in perfecting the world."

That Judaism and Israel are targets of liberation theology can not be doubted. Both rhetorically and physically, its forces are arrayed against the Jewish state. In perhaps the movement's ultimate irony, the misconstrued message of the prophets is marshalled for the destruction of a resurrected Israel.