http://forward.com/articles/114180/
How I’m Losing My Love For Israel
The Polymath
By Jay Michaelson
Published September 16, 2009, issue of September 25, 2009.
To paraphrase a recent Jewish organizational tagline, I’ve “hugged and wrestled with Israel” for 20 years now. At first, it was all embrace: Zionist songs and culture nourished me like mother’s milk, and on my first trip to Israel I kissed the tarmac at Ben Gurion, as did the other USY (United Synagogue Youth) kids.
Eventually, the wrestling came to the fore, particularly as I became more conscious of Palestinians, settlements and religious-secular divides. In 2002, I wrote about being “a leftist and a Zionist” and how difficult it was to maintain those dual political identities. And for several years, I’ve argued for a more nuanced approach to Israel advocacy and education than the hail of falafel balls and the bludgeon of Taglit-Birthright.
But lately I’ve noticed that I’m becoming a candidate for advocacy myself. I’ve loved Israel for decades, lived there for three years, and studied in detail the subtleties of its society and conflicts. And so it is with the sadness that accompanies the end of any affair that I notice my love is starting to wane.
Why? There are four primary reasons.
First, I admit, it has become simply exhausting to maintain the ambivalence, the hugging and the wrestling, the endless fence sitting. My love of Israel has turned into a series of equivocations: “I do not support the expansion of settlements, but the Palestinians bear primary responsibility for the collapse of the peace process in 1999.” “The Israelis acted overzealously in Gaza, but they must be entitled to defend themselves against rocket attacks.” “Yes, the separation wall is odious, but it is also effective and necessary.” Yes, but; no, but; defend, but. At some point, the complexity and ambiguity wears one out, particularly when the visuals on the anti-Israel side are so compelling, and so stark: walls, tanks, checkpoints.
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I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse. I know this is a sign of weakness of will on my part, and I hope that the Times-magazine-sanctioned rise of J Street changes things, but I don’t think advocates of Israel understand exactly how bad the situation is on college campuses, in Europe, and in liberal or leftist social-political circles. Supporting Israel in these contexts is like supporting repression, or the war in Iraq, or George W. Bush. It’s gotten so bad, I don’t mention Israel in certain conversations anymore, and no longer defend it when it’s lumped in with South Africa and China by my friends. This is wrong of me, I know, but I’ve been defending Israel for years, and it’s gotten harder and harder to do so.
How much of Israel’s pariah status is fantasy and how much is reality is, of course, a complicated question, and one that I would not presume to answer in this column. In the conversations I’ve had, it’s some of each — and again a subject for equivocation. Yes, Israel’s new government is a right/far-right alliance whose foreign policy looks suspiciously like Yitzhak Shamir’s era of “Say yes and do nothing.” But on the other hand, I understand why many Israelis are fed up and voted for it, and the oversimplifications among Israel’s critics are many. For example, just because this government is expanding settlements does not make doing so an essential part of Israel’s identity.
But I’m not sure the parsing matters. I’m not sure any state with tanks can win a propaganda war against an occupied people with guns and Molotov cocktails — even if the occupied people’s leaders deserve plenty of blame. It’s exhausting to keep fighting this fight, especially as Israel’s authentically odious actions (excesses by soldiers, expropriations of land) continue to pile up, and the yes-buts grow harder and harder to maintain.
The second reason for my waning love of Israel is that the Israel I love is increasingly disappearing. It started in Jerusalem, with the exodus of the secular left and the slow, agonizing demise of the culture they created. Now, many of my sabra friends are leaving the country entirely, desperately looking for tech jobs in California or academic postings in Indiana. However worn out I may be by the matzav my friends who have lived in it are far worse. For now, Tel Aviv’s liberal, secular, life-celebrating culture continues to thrive and is even developing a spiritual aspect — but like many Israelis, I feel like I’m reading the writing on the wall.
Part of the problem here is that the Israel I love is not the Disneyland most of my fellow Americans seem to adore. Sure, I cry at Macadam and even feel moved at the kotel. But my Israel is one of shuks, cafes, shtiebels and hiking trails; of family and friends; of my alma mater on Mount Scopus and my favorite field in Talbieh (Churshat Hayareach, an open space continually threatened with destruction). Personally, I find the way many Americans strut in and out of Jerusalem for the holidays partly ridiculous and partly nauseating. So while the storybook Jerusalem remains more or less intact, I care less about it than the delicate, messy harmonies of the real ones.
Worse than that, the mythic Israel is now actively affecting — I would say harming — the real one. The handful of rich American conservatives who have influenced Israeli politics lately have tended to prefer grandiose myths to the messy realities that should govern pragmatic decision making — and eventually, all those simplifications add up to dangerous distortions in policy. The “fantasy Israel,” the one many Americans seem largely to inhabit, doesn’t compensate for the erosion of the real one. On the contrary, it causes it.
Nor am I myself immune; the third way in which my love for Israel is waning is that I’ve started to second-guess the love itself. How distant is my love of Churshat Hayareach from the sentimentality of a tourist at the Wall? (The Western one, that is, not the Separation one.) Am I not, too, an American moved, and thus partially blinded, by religious and national myth? How different am I, really, from those who value the poetry of the kotel over the prose of human rights? Am I really so different from those whose pro-Israel company I keep? It’s not that American Jews’ myths about Israel are false — it’s just that they have a way of shaping narrative, and papering over problems like, oh, the two million non-Jewish residents of Greater Israel.
This is especially the case because those problems are often rendered invisible. When my more liberal friends used to call me out about Israeli politics, I would sometimes respond that the picture they had, shaped by Western media, was a distorted one. Really, I’d say, Israel is a wonderful place — a place where doors are left unlocked and musicians play in the street, and where an almost-extinguished culture rose from literal ashes.
But, you know, a Southerner in the 1950s or an Afrikaner in the 1980s might say similar things. Yes, living within Green Line Israel, it’s possible to forget the Occupation (a term that certain Jewish news agencies feel obliged to scare quote). But maybe that’s part of the problem: The current regime of Separation (apart-ness, perhaps?) is all too effective. And so I’ve begun to second-guess even my own love of the place, wondering how much of it is built upon a foundation of deliberately constructed ignorance, a result of years of selective education. I sip my limonana, and five miles away a mother is harassed at a checkpoint. Which is reality and which fantasy?
Finally, I think my love of Israel is fading because I feel personally implicated by its injustices, even though I have chosen to live in America and have relinquished my right to have any say over Israeli policy. (If only some of my countrymen would feel similarly.) On a recent trip to Berlin, I remarked to a friend that I felt more relaxed there than in Jerusalem. Part of it was that Berlin is a liberal city, and part of it was that I didn’t have to be frisked every time I walked into a cafe. But mostly, I think, I felt relaxed because while there was certainly plenty of political baggage around, none of it was mine. I’m not implicated in Germany’s wrong decisions (to be clear, I refer more to Turks in 2009 than to Jews in 1939), whereas I do feel implicated by Israel’s.
This sense of implication is perhaps yet more fantasy — yet another American thinking he’s part of a country he doesn’t inhabit. But it comes with the territory of love, which is perhaps why I’m slowly disengaging. I understand why many Israelis feel fed up with the Palestinian problem and are ready to slam the door. But as an outsider, I no longer want to feel entangled by their decisions and implicated in their consequences. B’seder: It’s your choice to make… but count me out.
In my heart, I still love the stones and trees of Jerusalem, even though I know that love is sentimental, problematic and shared with people I mistrust. I am still awed by the tkuma, the resurrection and rebirth of my ancient people. And, yes, I feel like underscoring, I still support the State of Israel, its right to exist and the rest. Most important, it is still, in part, my home.
But especially on this side of the ocean, more and more of those who feel similarly have politics, agendas and overall experiences of Israel very different from mine. What they love is not what I love, and how they love is terrifying. And so while my love endures, my unease grows, and with it, the gnawing sense that this relationship is in trouble.
http://danielgordis.org/2009/10/09/no-right-to-exhaustion/
No Right to Exhaustion
Posted by Daniel Gordis in Featured Articles on October 9, 2009 | 55 responses
Dear Jay,
We don’t know each other, though I’ve known of you and your work for some time. Like many others, I recently read your “How I’m Losing My Love For Israel” in the Forward. Because you write so articulately, and because your column has attracted such widespread attention, I’m taking the liberty of responding.
The truth is, you and I agree about a lot. We’re both worried about some of what’s happening to Israeli society. We’re both tired of all the equivocating (though probably for different reasons). We’d both love some real leadership around here. We’d both like peace. And we’re both exhausted.
That exhaustion is the first reason you give for that fact that your “love [for Israel] is starting to wane.” But frankly, Jay, when you began to write about your exhaustion, I began to lose you. For, I have to confess, I don’t see the connection between exhaustion and losing love, or between exhaustion and committing oneself to what’s right and just.
I suspect that the Partisans were pretty exhausted, and they might even have debated some of their own tactics; but those were the least of their problems. Their main worry was that evil might triumph and transform their world into an uninhabitable hell, and their bone-aching fatigue notwithstanding, they committed their lives to making sure that human freedom survived those who wished to eradicate it.
The GI’s who slogged their way across Europe, up the cliffs of Normandy and across the frozen, bitter winters of that blood-soaked continent, were pretty exhausted, too, I’d imagine. Yes, many of them were kids, following their orders. And many of them were probably distraught that innocent Europeans were getting killed by the thousands in the process of saving the west. But many, I would also like to believe, knew that what they were fighting to preserve was infinitely more important than their own personal exhaustion or the tragic innocent losses that war always entails. Or even their own lives.
That clarity of purpose was, in the end, why we won, and why you and I live in democracies where we can write and say whatever we like. Had the Partisans and those GI’s given in to their fatigue, would you and I have the very liberties we so easily take for granted? I doubt it.
So, yes, we’re exhausted. And, if you’ll forgive me, I suspect that those of here are more exhausted than are those of you over there. Life here is conducted under a pervasive cloud of exhaustion that my most of American friends simply don’t comprehend. It’s the exhaustion that comes from coming home at the end of the day and finding on your door a diagram distributed by the Home Front Command showing you how many seconds you have to find shelter if a missile should be aimed your way. What do you do with that information? Ignore it? Or put it on the fridge as the sign instructs you to, so you can live with the looming warning every time you go to get a glass of OJ?
But that’s really the least of it. The real exhaustion here comes from sending a smart but relatively naïve nineteen-year-old daughter off to the army (in Intelligence, in this case) and have her begin to learn things about Israel’s enemies that she will never be able to discuss. The exhaustion comes from the hollow look of an unfathomable sadness in her eyes when she’s home, from her bewilderment at the evil of which human beings are capable – an awareness a young woman shouldn’t have at that age. And you grow exhausted because you want to take care of her, to protect her. But you can’t.
You can’t take care of your kid because this is Israel. Because she can’t tell you what she knows. She can’t talk to you about the human capacity for hatred that she now confronts every single day. And because this is Israel, you can’t take of her – because here things are reversed. She’s out there taking care of you. So you get into bed each night knowing that you’ve sacrificed a part of her innocence and her youth on the altar of your beliefs and ideology, and you wonder, each and every day, if what you once thought was a noble life choice might have been the most unfair thing you ever did. That, Jay, is more exhausting than I’d ever imagined it would be.
She’s out of the army now. But her brother’s not. And there are those days, only once every few months, when I’m either leaving the house in the morning to go to work or coming home at the end of the day, when on the sidewalk outside our building are two IDF officers, and it appears that they’re walking to our entrance. Then comes that split second moment of breath-stopped horror, the fear that they’re coming to our house, bearing tidings that would be wholly unbearable. It’s only happened three or four times, but it’s enough. They walk past the building, Jay, barely even nodding to me because they’re in the middle of a conversation, unaware that I’ve even noticed them. But I’m a mess. Drenched with sweat. Shaking slightly. Knowing that the rest of the day or the evening is going to be a utter waste of time.
And at moments like that, you want to call your kid. Not for anything in particular; just to tell him that you love him. That you miss him. That there really isn’t a moment when you’re not thinking about him, or praying that he’s OK.
But you can’t. Because he can’t use his phone. Because he’s busy. Because he’s out there protecting his parents. And his brother. And his sister, who used to protect him. Simply because when he was a very little boy, we decided we wanted to live here; and now he’s out there, doing this, year after relentless year. Loving Israel is exhausting, Jay, you’re right. But really, it’s way more exhausting here than it is over there.
So the real question isn’t whether or not we’re exhausted – lots of us are tired. (I keep this picture on my desktop for those moments when I feel exhausted … to remind myself that no matter how tired I am, there are people out there (this is not my kid) who are way more exhausted than I am.) The real question, I think, is not whether we’re exhausted, but rather what we do with our exhaustion. What makes all the difference is not our fatigue, but what keeps us going when our tank feels empty, when it feels like all that’s left is fumes.
Like you, Jay, I know that I was raised on an image of Israel that doesn’t really exist. Maybe it never did. Like you, there were open fields in Jerusalem that I used to love (for you, it was Churshat Ha-Yaraeach) that are now filled by large apartment buildings. But when we lived in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, our older neighbors used to reminisce about the days when our neighborhood had been all orange groves. Did they stop loving America because fields got built on? I didn’t sense that. When we live in America and watch fields get built up, we sense progress. But when it’s a field in the Israel of our youth that’s now gone, we feel betrayed. What’s that about? Maybe it’s time we all moved beyond puppy love and ventured into something more mature, a sort of love that knows that the object of our love cannot, and should not, remain unchanged year after year, decade after decade.
Like you, Jay, I am concerned about some of the injustices that Israel commits. But unlike you, I could never be “more relaxed [in Berlin] than in Jerusalem.” You wrote very compellingly that you felt relieved that though there was political baggage in Berlin, “none of it was mine.”
But you know what I love about this place, Jay? I love that all the political baggage is mine. The Palestinians. The Israeli Arabs. (Some of) the Haredim. A collapsing educational system. Murders on the streets with a constancy we never used to have. A nation of roads and drivers that kills many more Israelis than our enemies do. That’s all my baggage.
But living here, my baggage is also the sight of young secular and religious Israelis going from restaurant to restaurant, inspecting not their kashrut, but how they treat their workers, and depending on what they find, giving them a “social kashrut” certificate. It’s the sight of many hundreds of people coming out to hear Rabbi Benny Lau on the Shabbat afternoon before Yom Kippur in a synagogue that couldn’t begin to accommodate them all, because, they knew, he would be the one guy in the city among all the derashot that afternoon who would tie whatever he was saying to a vision for a different kind of society, and call on them to do something about it. Living here is about spending a morning on Sukkot, going to the Church in Kiryat Yearim and joining a capacity crowd of Jews and Christians, largely secular but also some people wearing kippot, listening to the choir perform Bach motets on precisely the spot where the Ark of the Covenant once rested. It’s about the vision of people who, no matter what CNN will tell you, really can live with people who are different from them; it’s about a blending of the ancient past and the complicated present, of setting aside the equivocations of which you write so articulately for a beauty about which you say very little. Living here is about feeling the pulse of people who still have hope, who desperately want to build something different here, and who would never dream of saying aloud that they’ve given up.
Which is why, Jay, I can’t imagine leaving this place, and angry as I sometimes get, I could never write about losing my love for what we’re building here. Because I know that this is our last chance, and I know without a shred of doubt that the robust Jewish life that exists everywhere – in Manhattan as well as in Los Angeles, in London no less than in Johannesburg – exists because of Israel. Two generations ago, Jewish life in America wasn’t the Jewish life that you and I were raised on. It wasn’t nearly so secure after the war. And though 1948 made a bit of a difference, the secure and self-confident American Jewish life that you and I take for granted really emerged in 1967, when Jews around the world finally stood tall because they were no longer the objects of history, but were now the shapers of their own destiny.
Would that 1967 war prove to have a very complicated aftermath? Yes, it would – we’re still trying to figure it out. But it changed everything, Jay, for me and for you. For my neighbors and for yours. I can’t imagine a world in which I’d want to be alive in which this country didn’t exist; which is why I’m constitutionally incapable of saying that I’m losing my love for it.
That’s the real difference between us, Jay, and it’s the reason that your exhaustion leads you where it leads you, and mine leads me to dig in my heels. You write that as you notice your love starting to wane, you feel a “sadness that accompanies the end of any affair.”
That’s a fascinating metaphor. Because at the end of an affair, most people put their lives back together by telling themselves that despite the pain of the moment, there will be someone else. “A lot of fish in the ocean,” we told each other in college when relationships broke up, which was to say, “she’s not the only one out there, and she’s not the last one you’ll love.”
Which may have been true of our youthful relationships back then, but it’s not true of Israel. This is the only one. This is the last chance we get. We lose this, and the Jewish people heads into dark, uncharted territory that I don’t think you or I can begin to imagine. You yourself wrote that you “still awed by the tkuma, the resurrection and rebirth of my ancient people.”
You’re absolutely right. This country is the very foundation of the resurrection and rebirth of our ancient people. Given that, how dare we not love it, even with all its faults? Is love Israel exhausting? Of course it is. Does it require lots of equivocation? Yes, it does. Is it very unpopular in lots of circles? No question.
But it’s bigger than me. And it’s bigger than you. It matters more than all of us. So given that, I don’t think we have a right to exhaustion. Or, if exhaustion is inevitable, then the only thing I think we have a right to is a few hours of sleep, until we get up the next morning, roll up our sleeves and get to work again.
Because loving Israel isn’t like an affair. It’s a totally different thing. In a relationship, the person I love and I both matter – more or less equally, I guess. But not here. In this, I don’t matter. You don’t matter. Only justice matters. Only the future matters. Only the Jewish people’s survival matters. And without this place, there is no future, no Jewish people.
Given that, what’s the alternative to a deep and abiding love? I can’t think of one. So tonight, I’m going to roll up my sleeves and head off to shul. I’m going to put the news out of my mind, and for a few hours, I’m going to forget about the equivocation, about the fatigue. I’m going to hold on to my son, the one kid still left at home – and when the singing starts, I’m going to dance.
Shabbat Shalom, Jay, and Chag Same’ach.
http://www.hartmaninstitute.com/Opinion_C_View_Eng.asp?Article_Id=525
Relationship of Israel and World Jewry Depends on Meaning, Not Claims of Necessity (19/07/2010)
By Donniel Hartman
The recent debate about conversion in Israel has brought to the fore an important question for Israeli society. Let’s leave aside for now whether the proposed legislation in fact constitutes a change in policy toward Conservative and Reform conversions in the United States, or whether it will be at all helpful in facilitating conversion in Israel for the roughly 300,000 non-Jewish citizens. I believe that the answer is “No,” in either case, and the debate is more about politics than substance. The question remains, however: To what extent must Israel take into account the beliefs, concerns, and ideologies of those who do not live in Israel?
It seems that every government in Israel faces this core dilemma at some point: choosing between the agendas of its coalition partners for whom liberal Judaism is either irrelevant or a convenient punching bag around which to rally its supporters, and Israel’s supporters around the world.
Israel and world Jewry today are at a crossroads in which each, while often reflecting and representing very different populations, political interests, and Jewish beliefs, have to decide whether we are going to continue to function as a religion with one nation and one people, or whether we are going to proceed alone.
For world Jewry, the key question is not whether they are willing to take a leap of faith and support every policy decision, legislation, or action taken by the Israeli government, Knesset, or society. The question is whether they are willing to take a leap of loyalty in which their commitment to Israel as a critical and essential part of their modern Jewish lives is strong and secure.
Such a commitment, far from demanding agreement, in fact encourages debate and criticism. It requires a commitment to Israel not as it is, but as it ought to be, and a willingness to invest in creating such an Israel. It requires a deep caring, whereby, in times of failure and in times of need, they stand by staunchly and work to build and sustain an Israel that they can respect and love.
We Israelis, despite brash statements to the contrary, yearn for and need that love. The problem on our part is that we are often not willing to do what is necessary to sustain and support it. We think all that we need to do is to wave the military “crisis du jour” to rally the troops and reap financial and political dividends.
Israel, as the homeland of the Jewish people, can no longer claim a self- evident, essentialist argument for its necessity for the future of Jewish survival, or for that matter its birthright as the leader of world Jewry and world Judaism. The future of the relationship between Israel and world Jewry is not dependent on claims of necessity but rather of meaning and importance. Jews in many places around the world, particularly in North America, have created a home and a vibrant and vital Judaism for themselves. If Israel is to have a role in their lives, it must earn it. To earn it, Israel must be a place where religious pluralism and diversity reign. It must be a place where the various Judaisms of the Jews have footholds and a place of respect. It must be a place where our foreign and military policies are morally and Jewishly defensible. It must be a place where the impact of our policies on world Jewry is an integral part of our political deliberations. It must be a place which strives to represent the best of what the Jewish people stand for.
Such a place will emanate an energy and creative light that will attract loyalty and sustained love in good times and in bad, in times of agreement and in times of disagreement.
It is time to stop bemoaning the chasm which is being torn in the foundation of our people and begin the task of reestablishing this foundation anew. The first steps in doing so are to avoid moves which deepen the growing alienation that threatens to spin out of control. World Jewry must be very careful and certain about the battles it chooses to fight and the criticism it levels. It must be careful not to allow its own political denominational politics to lead it into confrontations that are more about form than substance. Israel, for its part, has to avoid language and policies that are both hurtful and harmful to our relationship and must not only avoid doing new harm but actually begin to repeal the harms of the past and begin instituting policies of healing.
It is time to reclaim our shared loyalty and commitment and join together in building an Israel which can serve as the cornerstone for our love.
Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is President of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
Engaging Israel: Beyond Advocacy (09/03/2010)
By Donniel HartmanSince Operation Cast Lead and the subsequent Goldstone Report, there has been an increasing sense that anti-Israeli opinion has moved beyond criticism of some of Israel’s actions and policies to the delegitimization of the Zionist project as a whole. We Israelis and Jews must have no problem with constructive criticism. Our tradition has taught us that criticism is first and foremost an act of love and loyalty. We welcome it as a necessary check-and-balance in ensuring moral behavior. In fact, we have always been our own greatest critics. When we define all criticism of Israel’s policies as anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic, we are neither accurate nor serving Israel’s interests. However, undermining the essential legitimacy of the State of Israel as a Jewish State or as the homeland of the Jewish people is not criticism but rather a danger which we must confront and combat.In Israel and throughout the Jewish world there has been a marshalling of forces to develop materials, programs, and new advocates to make the case for Israel. The aim of these programs is to combat distortions and present Israel’s side of the facts. However important and valuable these efforts are, they often fail to achieve their end. When the case for Israel is grounded only on a factual narrative it is often unconvincing to those who hold a counter factual perception. In general, positions are rarely formed purely around facts, but rather by ideological, moral, and psychological propensities which then construct factual narratives to reinforce the preexisting commitment.
The concentration on the above form of Israel advocacy, while valuable in educating the completely uninformed, overlooks an audience which in my mind needs to be a major focus of our efforts, and for whom current Israel advocacy either is unnecessary or ineffective. I am referring to the mainstream Jewish community itself, which has been raised to care about Israel and is now finding that the foundations of its connection is being undermined.
The reality is that the majority of committed Jews, for the most part, lack a language to understand or articulate their feelings about Israel and their desire to continue to support it. This leaves them vulnerable and exposed by the campaign of delegitimization, for they do not possess a framework from which to combat it.
The reason for this predicament is the fact that since its inception the standard arguments for support of Israel amongst world Jewry no longer resonate with most Jews, especially those 50 years and younger. These arguments can be divided into three. We must support Israel either because:
- Israel is necessary as a safe haven in the event of a new Holocaust;
- The survival of the State of Israel is in danger;
- Israel is a central ally in the West’s war against the “Axis of Evil.”
Besides being mutually contradictory, a common feature of all three as stated is that are increasingly irrelevant. Most Jews in North America feel increasingly at home in their societies and do not feel called to combat the urgency of the threat of a potential Holocaust. Secondly, their political consciousness regarding Israel was not formed by the angst preceding the Six Day War, or by the precariousness of Israel’s existence exposed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Their first war as adults was the war in Lebanon in 1982 and then there was the Intifada. They were raised on the story of Israel’s power and military might. Protecting Israel from its “stronger” neighbors is not a meaningful or persuasive argument. Finally, as voting patterns in the Jewish community in North America have revealed, most do not see the war against the “Axis of Evil” as either central or compelling to their lives and an enterprise to which they want to contribute.
It is time for us to recognize that the Jewish community in general and Israel in particular have failed to develop a new Jewish narrative for the Jewish people around the world on which to base their relationship with Israel. Jewish organizations and Israel have held steadfast to the three arguments above for they were successful in creating a crisis-centered relationship with Israel which was effective in raising money. These actions, however, have mortgaged our future on the altar of immediate and short-term institutional needs. Repayment is now due, and the resources are lacking.
The Jewish community is not in need of an Israel advocacy campaign of facts and figures alone, but also of a new Jewish narrative based on Jewish ideas and values for engaging Israel in a way that will help integrate Israel into a modern Jewish identity. Jews today need to be able to address crucial questions for which they currently do not know the answer. For example: What is the role of “peoplehood” in modern Jewish identity? What is the meaning and purpose of Jewish sovereignty connected to territory rooted in the land of Israel to modern Jewish life? What are the requirements of morality of war, and how can Israel use its power in a way that is consistent with the highest standards of Jewish morality and values? How does Israel balance its legitimate right of self defense with the rights of others? Can a Jewish state be reconciled with the values of Jewish pluralism and freedom? Does the aspiration for a Jewish state automatically define Israel as a racist, apartheid state?
These are just some of the questions that need to be addressed and answered by this new Jewish narrative of Israel and Zionism. If one cannot answer them, there is neither a foundation for connecting to Israel nor the ability to sustain a viable and meaningful relationship. We need to educate and empower the Jewish community to engage Israel in a meaningful way before we can even think about asking them to advocate on its behalf.
Israel has been formed under almost impossible conditions and is still a young and deeply imperfect democracy. Not only are we not beyond criticism, we are in dire need of committed voices within our community who will lovingly challenge Israel to not accept the status quo and to continue to strive higher. If engaging Israel will be successful it will be so only because we will find a way to integrate commitment to Israel within a larger Jewish value conversation and invite people of all political and religious sensibilities to be engaged and participate in thinking about and shaping the unfinished experiment which is modern Israel.
