 Take my advice: don't take my advice
A friend in North America has invited me to address a group of friends committed to Israel and also to a Liberal worldview. They are concerned about what they see as the disconnect between the pro-Israel stance offered by most in the Jewish establishment and the daily reality of alienation, frustration and growing apathy which they see around them. At the end of the letter he asks: should we establish a local J-Street (if any of my readers don't know what this organization is, you can Google them), put pressure on our government to work for the policies we support, renew our membership to Israeli peace organizations? Gaza and Goldstone, settlement activity, attitudes to the Other in Israeli society, the bizarre relationship between Religion and State - all these persuade my friend and his circle that they have to do something other than just mouth the usual platitudes. For the sake of variety, they want me to come and share my platitudes What should I say to such a group? And what's the idea behind having me and mixing my angst with theirs? There is in part a vestige here of the old authenticity dilemma: since you don't live in Israel, the old line goes, you don't really have the right to make a noise in the way you would really like to. Meanwhile many Israelis seem to have no problem decrying the excesses and stupidities of their government, so why not bask in their irreverence? There is something wrong with this picture. Jews in the Diaspora do not need to ask permission from anyone to express their views. It's a remnant of a moribund guilt complex, an urge to defer to those who realized Zionist nirvana and now pay their taxes to the Jewish State. Israelis have no right to tell Jews in the Diaspora what to do, who to marry, how to behave, just as my sister has no right to order me to clean my room. But if my sister stays in touch, shares in my triumphs and disasters, then she does indeed have the right to tell me that if I ever want to get on in life, I should clean up my room. There is a condition of mutuality - I have to be able to tell my sibling about her interior design disasters, and she has to be able to listen as well. A message to Ahmedinejad
Dear President Ahmedinejad, You don't know me, and the chances of us meeting are not great. I live in Jerusalem, a Jewish citizen of the State of Israel. I was born in Britain, which I understand figures pretty high on your list of Satanic nations. I am also a Reform rabbi, an exponent of a religious philosophy which espouses moderation and modernization. So it's fair to say that you and I mix in different circles, or perhaps that should be centrifuges. Mahmoud (you can call me Michael if you choose to reply), I get the feeling we need to talk. Apart from the unpromising start (British-born Zionist liberal Jew Beelzebub), you ought to know that there are many things against the State of Israel you could say which I would agree with. In our regime here such opposition is allowed, indeed it's even encouraged. I am profoundly concerned about the way in which we distribute our resources here, and I fear that our approach to the Palestinian people has been tragically in error. I also think it's time to wrest authority from the hands of religious politicians who have done a disservice both to politics and to religion. (Come to think of it, we may not have so much in common on that last point.) We've just had a big day here in Israel and around the Jewish world (I think you call it the international industrial-financial insidious cabal). I am sure you have received satellite imagery of sudden and intensive cycling and skateboard activity, and before you misinterpret this as a military maneuver or sinister escalation, I ought to explain. In some ways, you would have approved of the scene - millions of Jews reflecting on what they have done wrong and resolving to do better. I'm sure you would have been happy to offer many suggestions in this regard. It was quite a scene here - religious and secular (I'll explain that another time) spending a day removed from their workaday lives trying to think through the meaning of life and the nature of their relations with others. Some exploited the almost complete absence of cars on the road to set loose their children on self-propelled wheeled conveyances of every imaginable kind. I spent a good part of the day thinking about my personal pitfalls and shortcomings, and also about the challenges facing my people and my country. I won't bore you with the personal stuff - I guess much of it would sound familiar to many of your countrymen, since the human condition transcends political and ideological boundaries. On the wider social level, I have been increasingly alarmed about the increasing chauvinism and insensitivity on display here. I also pray fervently that we will have the courage to face up to those in our nation who combine messianic fervor with political fanaticism. We have a lot of work to do. Why am I telling you all this? If you read any of our newspapers (it's a shame there's no Persian language edition of the major titles, but I am sure you have assistants with good Ulpan Hebrew) you'll know that my views are shared by many in Israel. The point of all this, then, is not to leak you information you would not otherwise have received. Instead, I want you to know that by your utterances and actions you have made all the differences between moderates and extremists in my country dissolve into irrelevance. By choosing to repeat the old Big Lie, and by raising the specter of our annihilation, you may have done more for Jewish unity than anyone else I know. Jerusalem is a special cityJerusalem is a special city. If you ever doubt this, try staying away for a little while. True, many Israelis have become so practiced in the art of staying away from Jerusalem that this has been elevated from simple aversion to full-blown abhorrence. True, many of us who bring up children in this city know that our offspring are preparing to spring off and leave as soon as the opportunity presents itself. True, increasingly Jewish visitors from abroad are becoming inured to the blandishments of the holy city, and developing a marked preference for the lure of Tel Aviv (The Big Pineapple) or Haifa (The Bahai Chapel) or even Hadera (the Big Falafel), over Jerusalem - the Big Grapple. Testing loyalty
"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." In order to avoid any unpleasantness with copyright lawyers I should make clear that these stirring words are not mine. And however germane they may appear to be to these times and this region, their origin (as many of my readers will have identified) is different. It was with these words that Franklin Delano Roosevelt accepted the office of President of the United States of America, a little over 75 years ago. Whose Hannukah is it anyway?Both of my regular readers will have noticed that I have been silent for the last couple of months. I have not been away, nor has there been a shortage of events worthy of comment. In fact, the problem has been mine: I have been struck by the uneasy sense that nothing I write can make any difference. No difference to the inhabitants of Sderot and the settlements closest to the Gaza Strip. No difference to the drivers of Israel as we engage in our relentless cull of pedestrians and passengers. No difference to the recipients of hundreds of millions of philanthropic dollars which have been lost in the greatest con trick in the history of Wall Street. No difference to the confused voters of Israel, caught between mediocrity and demagoguery, platitude and posturing. Study night near GazaOne of the many blessings of living in Israel is that text can interact with context in remarkable ways. For one thing, of course, you can actually walk the Bible and the literature of the Rabbis, stumbling upon sites and sights recorded in the Jewish classics. There is a special resonance to following the exploits of kings and prophets, or to counting the steps leading up to the Temple entrance and comparing the number of verses in a Psalm designed to be read while ascending. Sometimes, if you sit up on the roof of our spectacular campus in the heart of Jerusalem and read of David and Bathsheba, you can almost catch a glimpse of them (which should encourage our neighbors to keep their curtains drawn). Shas - all shook up
Members of the Shas Party have contributed much to understanding and tolerance over the last few weeks in Israel. Two weeks ago it was Nissim Ze'ev, who likened the prevalence of homosexuality in Israel to the phenomenon of Avian Flu, and suggested that only radical action similar to the mass culling of chickens could help root out this abomination. Last week it was Shlomo Benizri, who has suggested that the most efficient way for the government to protect against the threat of earthquakes would be to abolish homosexual practices, since it is a well-known scientific fact that homosexuality causes earthquakes. Now there is an important difference between these two learned contributions to the public debate on sexual orientation and public health. The reference to bird flu is certainly an original insight of MK Zeev, who certainly deserves all the credit for this breakthrough in immunology. This is not the case with regards to MK Benizri, who has not been slow to point out that he has done nothing more than quote our sacred sources. Impressionists and Realists
Earlier last week history was made in Jerusalem. In a city in which history has been a cottage industry for three millennia, this is in itself not too much of a surprise. But the kind of history I am referring to is worthy of note in any case. The first ever serious academic conference on Reform Judaism in Israel took place. The Van Leer Institute, a highly prestigious center of research and public debate, initiated and hosted the conference, which attracted leading scholars from around the world - or at least from Israel and from the United States (the next conference of this kind will need to spend more time on the local varieties of this species to be found in South America, South Africa, Australasia, and Europe. And by the end of the century, we will no doubt be holding interplanetary seminars). Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness
The recently-issued Annual Report by the Association of Civil Rights makes grim reading. In the section on racism in Israeli society, it notes that there has been a steep rise in expressions of hatred by Jewish Israelis towards Arabs. 2006 saw a 26% increase in the number of racial incidents directed against Arabs; the intensity of feelings of hatred towards Arabs has almost doubled. Over half of the Jewish Israelis polled said they would not live in the same building with Arabs, that they opposed the inclusion of Arab parties in the government, that they approve of plans to encourage Arab emigration, and so on. The report also talks about the systematic degradation of Israeli Arab citizens when they want to get on an airplane at Ben Gurion Airport. Most of those interviewed thought that Arabs smell, and are unclean. In Israel, this report has been met by what might be described as a 3-D response. I don't mean to suggest by this that we have all decided to engage in a three-dimensional soul-searching treatment of the weighty and distressing evidence before us. Rather, the three Ds we prefer to employ are Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness. We deny the veracity of the evidence, suggesting that whoever could claim that such views abound in Israeli society must be a self-hating traitor. We dismiss the data clearly those interviewed were not representative of most people, or they were joking when they answered the questions. That so-called increase in incidents, we say, it is just our Arab neighbors being over-sensitive over nothing. My Hanukka, Your Hanukka
Mai Hanukka? What is Hanukka? These words are to be found in the classic discussion of the festival in Tractate Shabbat of the Babylonian Talmud. The question is not without reason: in Talmudic times it was a relatively new celebration, and there was no telling it was going to catch on any more successfully than some which didn't stand the test of time ? just think, if things had worked out differently we might have been shopping for gifts for Nicanor Day. What is Hanukka? How are we to understand its significance? In an excellent article published this week in a major Israeli daily, my colleague Rabbi Gilad Kariv, a brilliant young Israeli Reform rabbi, offers a compelling and relevant reading. Gilad, like others who espouse a liberal philosophy of Judaism, is not threatened by the notion that there is historical change within Judaism, or that our culture is constantly soaking in influences from outside. On the contrary: far from being threatened by this fact, he is emboldened and inspired by it. |
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