What Israel Means

How different these words seemed just three months ago. I had gone to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem as a delegate from ARZA, from the Association of Reform Zionists of America. Abigail, my middle daughter, was preparing to leave for Haifa to spend the summer studying at the University of Haifa. And Alan Dershowitz had just published a book entitled What Israel Means to Me wherein he asked some 80 prominent people, Jews and non-Jews, Americans and Israelis, to share their own personal feelings and thoughts about the Jewish state. The sermon appeared obvious—some intergenerational sharing on Israel just after the elections as a centrist coalition prepared to withdraw further from occupied territories.

Dershowitz’s book was to serve as the springboard. Some of the people he asked, like writer Charles Fenyvesi, talk of the new State of Israel saving the remnants of his family as they struggled out of Europe and DP camps following the Holocaust. Others, yes, like “Let’s Make a Deal” host Monte Hall, talk of the Zionist dream of building the land. Rabbi Harold Kushner speaks clearly of the connection of the people to the land promised by God. “A theology can live in the pages of a book,” he writes, “but a people has to live somewhere in the real world [and] Israel represents the central point of a circle.” Many talk of the miracle. Yet, for most, Israel is tied up in family. In an almost classic scene that many of us of a certain age can imagine, writer David Adler describes his first bus ride in Israel. A passenger on the Egged bus asked the driver to let her off midway between two regular stops. In New York, where Adler lived, such a request would have been either ignored or refused, and not too politely. Instead the driver asked why she wanted to get off there, and she told him her friend lived there on that block. “Which house? Who is it? Maybe I know her,” the driver said. Even though he did not know the friend, the driver made the unscheduled stop. Robert Alter, professor of Hebrew and comparative lit at Berkeley, painfully aware of Israel’s problems and critics, notes that all-too-many are ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The reality, he makes clear, is that one cannot have babies without dirty bathwater, especially in the case of such difficult babies as nation-states.

Had Dershowitz asked me, I would have stressed family and promise and home after the Holocaust. I also would have shared two quotes which have guided me in my thoughts and hopes and criticisms of Israel for so many years. The first was from Leonard Fein, professor, founder of Moment Magazine, once head of our Social Action Commission, now columnist for The Forward:

... the story is how, in our generation, the Jews have come to power, in Israel and in America, and about our response to that transforming change in the historic Jewish condition….It is the question of what this people does once it has a choice about what to do—for coming to power means, in the end, nothing more or less than having and making choices.

Thus, the second quote. Wrote Amos Elon in his classic work The Israelis: Founders And Sons almost 40 years ago:

Harrowing memory has helped Israelis to gather enough inner strength not only to avoid defeat but to go from one partial victory to another. Conversely, the terrible memory of loss and humiliation has kept alive among Arabs a sense of blind determination, born of abysmal outrage; this so far has prevented them from agreeing to any lasting settlement. The Arabs feel unable to accept the kind of of total reconciliation that the Israelis, because of their past, insist upon.

Yet Dershowitz’s choice of 80 prominent people has a troubling omission. They all seem to be my age or older, all except Natalie Portman who begins her essay with the words, “Israel is where I was born.” True, there may be fewer “prominent” folk in their 20s and 30s, but I would suggest to you that far more profound reasons exist for their omission. For our children have grown up in a country which, while honoring diversity, strongly encourages assimilation. They have grown up in a country with little antisemitism—and a world wherein Israel was never seen as a miracle, but always as an established fact. Furthermore and sadly, they have grown up in a world in which it seems that Israel rarely does anything right, a world wherein the victim has been turned into the victimizer, Sharon into Hitler, the Star of David into a swastika. Simply take a look at what takes place on some of our college campuses today.

In a study published in Commentary back in June entitled “Whatever Happened to the Jewish People,” Steven Cohen and Jack Wertheimer offer some convincing evidence of weakening American Jewish identification with other Jews along with a weakening of Jewish communal responsibilities at home. In a study back in 1989, 73% of Jews agreed that “caring about Israel is a very important part of my being a Jew;” in a study just last year, the figure had fallen to 57% with the drop-off far more significant among younger Jews. Cohen and Wertheimer suggest a number of reasons for these figures and others— a change in social interactions which reflects the inviting and welcoming country in which we live, a growing individuality to bounce back to Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone,” (I know, bowling balls do not bounce well), a change in giving which reflects this individuality where givers would rather direct personally their gifts than put them into a communal pot, and a diminution in the “once-forceful claims of Jewish peoplehood.”

Yet one wonders if the change in generations reflects also the growing changes in the two Jewish communities. One of the most thoughtful of Dershowitz’s responses came from J. J. Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Forward. With apologies to George Bernard Shaw, Goldberg writes that “American Jews and Israel are best described “as two communities separated by a common faith-heritage.” We share so much as the two primary communities to emerge out of the world of European Jewry. We share the same calendar and symbols, much of the same history, many of the same dreams. We each assume the other understands Jewish tradition the way we do.

Goldberg notes that we both live in freedom; we both live in democracies. But American Judaism has become a voluntary faith community and American Jews make daily choices in terms of that identification. Israel, on the other hand, reflects the daily regularity of life in an all-encompassing Jewish society with Hebrew the vernacular and even non-Jewish citizens of the state observing national holidays which are also, of course, Jewish holidays. Judaism, rather than voluntary, reflects a government sponsored form of Orthodoxy.

Thus, Goldberg suggests, think of the conundrum each of us faces as we interact with the other. For those Israelis reared in the Jewish culture of daily Israeli life, to whom being Jewish consists of speaking a Jewish language and riding a Jewish bus, what can it possibly mean to live as a Jew in, say, Milwaukee? Much as I hope to share a version of progressive Judaism through ARZA and through the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism, I know how long this will take. And to someone who grows up here in Milwaukee, can ten days on a Birthright trip, while wonderful, have a major impact on these trends or even build strong American Jews?

This is where we were to have begun tonight. Yet kassams on Sederot during my visit—followed by the killing of two Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of another, of Gilad Shalit, in a raid into Israel by Hammas. Then, near the beginning of Abby’s visit, the killing of eight Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of two more, of Ehud Goldvasser and Eldad Regev, in a raid into Israel by Hizbollah. Thus began war all over again, the same and yet so very different. The raids came out of Gaza and Lebanon, lands the Israelis had left a year ago and six years ago. So the purported “reason” could not have been over occupied territories. And a new Israeli government, still unsure of itself yet knowing a response was necessary, chose a variety of responses.

The Israelis will be debating the conduct and consequences of this war for months, if not years. We know the human costs—159 Israelis killed (the equivalent of some 8000 Americans) with the largest loss of civilian life ever, thousands wounded, perhaps nearly one thousand Lebanese killed, one million Israelis who lived north of a line from Haifa east either were stuck in stifling shelters for weeks or fled south, and monetary losses in the billions. Yet we also know that this war was a just war, a war of self-defense, wherein ultimately thousands of rockets, missiles, bombs in yet another form were indiscriminately fired upon Israel day after day. We also know that the proportionality of a response, to paraphrase Rabbi Schaalman’s words, is calculated not just by the actual event but also by the potential threat. And the threat was made quite clear, in action and in words—the destruction of the state of Israel. The words emanating from Hizbollah and out of Iran—and the symbolic actions denying the Holocaust taken by the Iranians—were unmistakable. Still, as the war continued, Israel’s response was seen by many in the Middle East and even elsewhere as inexcusable. And one can only despair when one places this conflict in the context of the larger region.

Yet I come here not to attempt to talk about such matters tonight; tonight is Rosh Hashanah. I come here, rather, to you, to family—and I come as a father. My daughter was in her dorm in Haifa when the first katushas and fajer rockets began to fall. Like every other Israeli, I went straight to the phone to reach her on her cell. We could not get through. It took two nerve-wracking hours before we got through, finding her huddled with her roommates in the safe room of their dorm. On their cells—talking to us and to her roommate’s parents here in the States and her roommate’s grandparents on kibbutz—they made the decision to leave, depending upon her roommate’s aunt and uncle to come pick them up in the middle of the night with the possibility of more katushas. Again, family. And Abby spent a number of days on kibbutzim south of Haifa until her entire program moved from Haifa to Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus.

The days passed as I watched my friends’ kids being called up; my eyes were glued to the computer dreading the recognition of any name, the fear of hearing “have you heard?” Then Abby taught me a lesson some two weeks later. It was erev Shabbat—she had chosen to spend the Friday in Tel Aviv on the beach. We had urged her to stay in Jerusalem—not to venture too far away under the circumstances—who would have thought that Jerusalem would have been the safest place to be. When the phone rang and she told us where she was, our voices may well have been heard on the beach even without the cell phone. Yes, we were that angry. But, as my daughter reminded me, life goes on. It was a beautiful day and she and her roommates were absolutely set on enjoying themselves with countless other Israelis in the sun and on the sand before traveling back to Jerusalem just in time for Shabbat. A small and simple lesson of life—and of hope.

Yet another story, of another father and daughter, and far more profound. As the ceasefire neared, the entire state of Israel heard about the death of Uri Grossman in battle in Lebanon. Uri was the son of David Grossman who, along with Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua, are the Israeli novelists most famous for writing since the creation of the state. David wrote these words as part of the eulogy for his son:

For now I am not going to say anything about the way in which you were killed. We, your family, have already lost this war….We will retreat into our own pain, surrounded by our good friends, enveloped in the enormous love that we feel today from so many people, many of whom we didn’t even know, and I am grateful for their boundless support. I only wish we all knew how to provide this support and solidarity in different times. This is perhaps our greatest and most treasured national resource.

David understood family. But later in the eulogy he shared this:

…at twenty minutes before three in the morning, our doorbell rang. The voice at the intercom said it was from “the municipal officer” and I went to open the door and I thought to myself, “That’s it. Life is over.” But within five minutes, when my wife and I went into Ruthie’s room and woke her up in order to give tell her the horrible news, Ruthie, after her first tears, said, “But we will live, right? We will live just as before, and I want to continue to sing in the choir, and that we will continue to laugh as always, and I want to learn to play guitar. And we hugged and we told her we would live.

Hope in the face of despair—life in the face of death.

My classmate Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro reminded me of a teaching found by Rabbi David Ellenson, the president of Hebrew Union College. Taken from the Talmud, it tells of two rabbis—Joshua and Eliezer, who debate the question as to when the world was created. Rabbi Joshua holds that the world was fashioned during the month of Nisan, the time of Pesach and spring. Joshua knows that spring is a time of rebirth, the season when the trees blossom and the earth awakens from its winter slumber, a time when a person can effortlessly recite a blessing that praises God for supplying the world with all its needs.

But Rabbi Eliezer disagrees. He responds that the world must have been formed in Tishri, the month which begins tonight, the month when fall arrives. It is clearly a contrary claim. Eliezer says we should celebrate the world’s beginning precisely when the days shorten, darkness increases, and nature prepares to be dormant. And you surely know what the weather was like today. With the harshness of winter on the horizon, Eliezer wants to celebrate beginnings.

Eliezer’s argument clearly won. For today is Rosh Hashanah, ha-yom ha-rat olam, the birthday of the world. And why did Eliezer’s argument win? Perhaps because the ancient rabbis knew how often life can feel dark and hopeless. They did not worry about us in spring. They worried about our strength in times like fall when the sun sets earlier and earlier, when grey sets in, when we know winter is near.

In that kind of setting, adds Rabbi Shapiro, when we can so easily slide into despair, our ancestors insisted that we have a celebration. Change the Torah mantles to white. Blow the shofar. Be resolute, be positive, be hopeful—choose life.

I could say AMEN. But this is family. After Abby returned home, we sent her roommate's grandparents flowers to say thank you. The florist in Israel needed their phone number on the kibbutz. When we called back a short while later to give it to him, he said, “Don’t worry. One of the delivery guys knows the family very well.”

And, as we rise for tefillah, page 30, note closely the words we will pray to God on the bottom of page 32.