Avraham Shmulevich

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Rabbi Avraham Shmulevich is an Israeli activist and politician. He was born in Murmansk as Nikita Dyomin, and took on a Jewish name later in life.

1 Biography
2 Ideology and activity
3 Significance
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Brought up in by secular Soviet parents, Shmulevich was as a young man vaguely aware that he was “Jewish” but in no way religious. After rediscovering the religion of his grandmother, he emigrated to Israel and became a rabbi (it is not clear in what order these two events took place). He settled in Hebron, and established a small radical organization called Bead Artseinu. Estimates of the membership of this organization in 2006 range from 10 to 200.

[edit] Ideology and activity

Bead Artseinu derives ideologically from the Russian radical milieu with which Shmulevich remained in touch even after leaving Russia, notably Edward Limonov and Alexander Dugin. Bead Artseinu is essentially an Israeli version of the variety of political Traditionalism established by Alexander Dugin.

Shmulevich asserts, using deliberately outrageous arguments reminiscent of the National Bolshevik Party, that Israel has a global mission: to lead the way into the twenty-first century, molding it as—he contends—Jews such as Marx, Einstein and Freud molded the twentieth century. As a first step, Israel must not only defeat proposals for a Palestinian state and the threat of Islamism, but go on to expand her control to cover the entire Middle East from the Nile to the Euphrates. This control need not be military, economic and social influence would suffice. As a second step, Israel must “reinstate the most primal layer of Tradition [that of Adam, the first Hyperzionist], but any such reinstatement would be also based on fusion with the most modern tendencies found in a post-industrial society.”

Although Bead Artseinu is suspected of violent actions against Arabs, it admits only to non-violent protests. These are colorful: the Hyperzionists wear red shirts and march in ordered ranks, led by a sheepdog called Fritz, who on one occasion ate a salami-laced cabbage painted as the head of Yasser Arafat.

[edit] Significance

Shmulevich does not represent any significant political force within Israel. He is however a notable example of a political trend exemplified by his associate Avigdor Eskin: the Israeli extreme right.

Two films about "Bead Artseinu" were screened on Israeli TV channels ("For God, King and Fatherland", by Petr Majstrovoy, and "The New Jewish Revolutionaries", by Alexander Stupnikov), and a chapter in the book "Against the Modern World", dealing with modern Traditionalist political parties and movements (ISBN 0-19-515297-2), is dedicated to the wider movement of which the group is a part.