Galilee Diary – Jewish Values

[Jeremiah] spoke to King Zedekiah…: Put your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon; serve him and his people, and live! (for this is Israel’s punishment for injustice and idolatry)
– Jeremiah 27:12

…The prophet Hananiah son of Azzur…said: Thus said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: I hereby break the yoke of the king of Babylon. (for God will protect and support Israel unconditionally)
– Jeremiah 28:1-2

I recently attended a demonstration of the “Light Tag” coalition, in front of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s residence. We were about 500, with many familiar faces, especially from the Reform and Conservative movements (though the outstanding speaker was an Orthodox rabbi, Benjamin Lau). “Light Tag” (tag me’ir) is a pun on the name of the phenomenon it opposes: “Price Tag” (tag mechir ) – the name given to the recent spate of Jewish hate crimes. It seems that some of the more extreme elements of the settler youth – and supporters and copy-cats from elsewhere – have taken it upon themselves to exact a “price” for the government’s conciliatory (?) moves toward the Palestinians, by torching mosques, vandalizing churches, spitting on priests on the street, violent attacks against random Arabs, puncturing Arabs’ tires, etc., throughout Israel. There have been proposals (by the minister of police) to label these activists as “terrorists,” which would give the police additional tools to deal with them. But such a decision keeps getting put off. It is interesting, as many speakers pointed out at the demonstration, that the security services, who can find and detain every 11-year old Arab kid who ever throws a stone, seem helpless against this current “plague.” It is hard to avoid the feeling that there are leaders in the political and religious spheres – and lots of people on the street – who don’t see these actions as such a big deal, or who even sympathize with them. When popular author Amos Oz recently called the perpetrators “Jewish neo-nazis,” he aroused a public outcry on the left as well as the right.

There are amusing anecdotes from the early years of the state, when Jews expressed pride and gratification at the normalization of the Jewish people: Finally, we had a real state, meaning we had Jewish police and Jewish prisons – and Jewish criminals and Jewish prostitutes – just like everyone else. Alas, the cuteness has worn off, as we see our former president in jail for rape, our former prime minister sentenced to jail for bribery, and a daily dose of reports on hate crimes against non-Jewish religious leaders and institutions (and against liberal Jewish institutions too). Normalization sounded like a good idea, but did we really mean it “all the way?”

Many of us in the liberal wing of Judaism are wont to declare that a Jewish state needs to be a state that exemplifies Jewish values. In this respect we are like the nationalist Orthodox school, who argue that normalization is not our ideal: our destiny is not to be just like everyone else, but to be exceptional, to be a state that implements the values of the Torah in real life. The problem is, of course, that we have not achieved consensus on just what “Jewish values” are, and on who gets to decide. In recent years a number of publications by nationalist Orthodox rabbis have gotten a lot of attention – bringing proof from traditional sources to support discrimination and violence against non-Jews. When we liberals object, they tell us that “the halachah is not pretty,” and that we are distorting Judaism to fit our western liberal values; then we bring our proof-texts to show that theirview is a distortion of Judaism. If we didn’t have a Jewish state with an army and a police force, this could be a philosophical discussion, as it was for centuries. We could happily be pluralists and agree to disagree. However, in our time, we cannot escape the challenge of having to implement our values, using real power in a real state. So we cannot really afford to be pluralists about our beliefs in this sphere.

It seems we’re in a culture war, similar to the one in Jeremiah’s day. That time the good guys lost, and we are still mourning the outcome.

Re-printed from the URJ Ten Minutes of Torah, June 4, 2014

Rabbi Marc J. Rosenstein is the retired director of the Galilee Foundation for Value Education and the current director of the Israel Rabbinical Program at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.

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It Is By Now No Secret Rejoinder

This conversation is critically important.  We invite all who are interested to join in either in the comments or in our Facebook group. 

Clearly, Dan Ross and I agree on the affirmatives: We love Israel, and we want to see it succeed as a “country of lofty ideals.” Even more than that, we probably share a sense of what those ideals look like, and I applaud him for his forward gaze. It appears, additionally, that we agree that our Western interlocutors, as defined by Ross, do not go out of their way to question Israel’s right to exist. But here’s where I think we disagree: the West’s acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state—not Netanyahu’s call for a diplomatic formulation as such but, more generally, the concept itself.

To be sure, the institutions of Israel’s statehood are firmly in place, and the West generally accepts that fact. And I am not an alarmist about the threats to Israel’s existence.

But I’m not at all sure that Europeans, just as an example, feel that the Jewish character of the state has any legitimacy, nor that that character is worthy of promotion or defense. Closer to home, the Presbyterian Church recently published the controversial “Zionism Unsettled,” a study-guide and DVD that questions both the current policies of Israel and its Jewish character.

More to the point, “Zionism Unsettled” conflates those policies and character as morally and inevitably twinned, and therein lies the difficulty. We progressive Zionists hold that Israel embodies a simultaneously (if imperfectly) Jewish and democratic character, and that destructive or short-sighted policies do not fundamentally belie or de-legitimate it. As such, we struggle against the policies, while we defend the state and its particular character.

I believe that, between these two positions, most people outside of the United States follow some variation on “Zionism Unsettled.” That is, they perceive the progressive Zionist position to be either paradoxical or quixotic and, in any case, impossible to uphold. They oppose the same policies that we progressive Zionists oppose. But insofar as they see those policies as a natural outgrowth of Zionism, they point to them as proof of the illegitimacy of Zionism itself.

And I believe that a subset of American Jewry is increasingly inclined to agree—passively, superficially or only incipiently—but to agree nonetheless.

So, when Ross specifically queries “to whom Dr. Holo believes we should be addressing ‘our Zionist assertions with sufficient confidence, information and conviction,’” I answer, as I had attempted to do in my initial posting: American Jewry. Secondarily, as per this posting, I might also address our Western interlocutors.

And here is my message: I am in unqualified agreement with Ross and his call to look to the future. And I want something additional, as well. I want progressive Zionists to re-articulate the Jewish claim to sovereignty, because it’s a compelling argument, and because American Jews may be losing sight of it. And yes, it is fundamentally an historical argument, but without it, Israel as such has no future to aim for.

Dr. Holo is the Dean of the Los Angeles Campus and Associate Professor of Jewish History at HUC-JIR/LA. He served as Director of the Louchheim School of Judaic Studies from 2006-2010. Dr. Holo’s publications focus on Medieval Jews of the Mediterranean, particularly in the Christian realm. His book, Byzantine Jewry in the Mediterranean Economy, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.

Big Thoughts over Brunch in Baka

Pre-Shabbat in Jerusalem is digestion time. On Friday mornings in my neighborhood of Baka, the main avenue teems with voracious brunch-devourers eager to squish a weekend’s worth of consumption into one extended meal. As Shabbat preparations commence and stores rush to fulfill orders for 30 hours of commercial hiatus (shops close here!), unemployed students like me seize the moment to click out of Morfix¹ and into Israel. Digestion for me is 25 percent brunch and 75 percent psychology. While I scoop labne (Israeli yogurt) onto scrambled eggs and conquer the ziggurat of cucumbers and tomatoes shoveled generously onto my plate, I try to make sense of the previous week’s Jewish, academic, and social intensity.

Having lived in New York City since the age of 17, with time spent in Berlin, Madrid, Paris and Washington, DC for academic and professional pursuits, I became convinced that Manhattan was the definition of urban vibrancy. But after 10 months in Jerusalem, I must admit that the Big Apple has a contender. The Jerusalem week is like a pitching machine that spits out obligations and opportunities at a fervent pace – and the unrelenting force of serious questions pushes this wired New Yorker into new realms of exhaustion.

In Manhattan, career and partnership are my major concerns. After I decided to pursue the rabbinate, and fell in love with my now-fiancé, I felt as if my scores were in – I had passed – and could move from being interrogated into the role of interrogator. I was comfortable, but somewhat despondent. Had I peaked by age 27? Was I to exchange my cloak of youthful mystery and dynamism for a pair of safe and static orthotics? Thankfully, in Israel, this option is off the table.

Even the minor moments in Jerusalem demand big thinking. My cab driver doesn’t care where I’m going – (we decide that before I open the door) – but he wants to know how it is possible to live as a “real Jew” outside of Israel. My lunch conversations at school revolve around questions of whether maintaining a Jewish demographic majority can harmonize with democratic values. And on my walks to school, I’m enmeshed in an internal debate over the values and drawbacks of secular vs. day school education for my fiancé’s and my future children. Cruise control is a luxury that Jerusalem cannot afford, and therefore one is accountable for every moment. My cab driver seems to have the same privileges as my grandmother, asking questions that that no one else would think of asking me.

I did not acclimate to this audacious atmosphere with ease. I was a case study in defensiveness. At first, I was a tourist in denial, then a frustrated resident, followed by a bruised family member, and now, after almost a year, I am an empowered-but-struggling advocate. To thrive in Israel, you have to read and ruminate, listen and linger. During my first few months here, I spent Fridays buried in The New York Times and catching up on missed seasons of Mad Men. I used my only time off to do a system update on my New York self, consistently avoiding the incipient Jewish-Jerusalem identity that was blooming despite me.

When winter break arrived and I finally made time for Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness, an insatiable appetite for Israeli literature was born, and with it, a willingness to check my New York loyalties at the door in order to give this miracle of a Jewish State a chance. Oz’s autobiographical novel opened a window to the birth of the Jewish state through the eyes of a brilliant and sensitive young Jerusalemite whose life converged with many of Israel’s founding intellectual elites.

In David Grossman’s To the End of the Land, I met Ora, a woman with a desperate love and concern for her soldier son who attempts to evade wartime fate by hiking the National Israel Trail. The sensory discovery of her connection to Eretz Yisrael has guided my own trips to the Galilee where much of her journey takes place.

Noted historian Anita Shapira illuminates the multi-faceted constellation of modern Israeli identity, among which journalist Ari Shavit and fiction writer Etgar Keret shine brightly through their individual encounters with modern Israel, real and imagined. This outpouring of hearts in turmoil is complex and critical, daring and deep, and the more I read, the more I identify with these authors’ participation in the task of Am Yisrael – to build a Jewish and democratic state that reckons honestly with the promise and pitfalls of power.

As I write this I am studying Parashat M’tzorah, which presents a treatise on categories of purity and impurity. With elaborate and time-consuming instructions for cleansing the tainted, we learn that transition between these categories is not lurching, but laborious. So, too, has been my transition from inexperienced tourist to implicated ally. I did not slaughter any turtledoves (Lev 14:22), but the journey between these two identities has demanded the sacrifice of that tender naivety that allowed me to look away from Israel toward iTunes and other distractions. I’m hooked now. I fell in love.

Once again, I’ve conquered my vegetable ziggurat, my eggs have gotten cold and the labne has made its way from my plate to my sleeves. The café is closing for Shabbat and another 30 hours of urban rest is descending upon us. I thank God for the blessing of a city that demands so much and reciprocates by shutting down and backing off. I need Saturdays to snuggle up with my Israeli authors and continue this incredible journey. For the more I read, the better I love, and the deeper this imperfect Jewish miracle plants itself into the landscape of my soul.

1. Online Hebrew-English Dictionary
2. Amos Oz. In the Land of Israel, 33.

Juliana Schnur is a first-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem and a Wexner Graduate Fellow. 

Re-printed from the UREJ Ten Minutes of Torah, April 16, 2014

Towards Experimental Zionism

About ten years ago, I fell out of love with Israel. I don’t remember exactly how, when, or why this process started. When I was in elementary school I wasn’t sure who I’d side with in a war between the US and Israel and when I was in 8th grade, at the beginning of the Second Intifada, my social studies teacher once told my mom that she was afraid that I was going to enlist in the IDF. But by the time that I was a sophomore in high school, I had already started questioning Israel’s actions and eventually I came to a situation in which merely expressing some doubt as to the wisdom of Israeli policy led a good friend of mine to stop speaking to me for three days.
Since then, Israel has been a topic I’d rather not discuss. I’ve been cowardly: I’ve been fearful of both the punishing silence of lost friends and the vicious volume of loud strangers. I retreated into a silent, irritated indifference. Poisonous politics spoiled any possibility that I might have had of appreciating this place for its own sake.
Until now. When I began rabbinical school at the Hebrew Union College, knowing that I would have to spend my first year in this country, living on this land, speaking its language, meeting its people, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to break down the concrete barriers in my mind and find a way rebuild my relationship with Israel out of Jerusalem stone. But fortunately, this has changed thanks to HUC’s exceptionally thoughtful approach to Israel studies—dedicating a weekly daylong seminar to soaking in the rich milk and golden honey of voices that constitute this society—and to a two-day colloquium on Israel engagement that I participated in with my fellow HUC students and students from other liberal seminaries. It has been a gradual process, punctuated by periods of powerful repulsion and profound appreciation. However, especially through my conversations with other Americans about their own ways of connecting with Israel, I believe that I have discovered the intellectual architecture with which I can reconstruct my collapsed connection with this place.
I call it experimental Zionism. Experimental Zionism understands Israel to be the grandest experiment in the history of the Jewish people, a messy exploration of what it looks like to create a society of Jews, by Jews, and for Jews. And the experimental Zionist’s first reaction to this society is fascination: it is something to study, to examine, to behold. But fascination alone—like unconditional, unquestioning love—is not enough to be Zionism. Zionism requires something more: vision.
Thus, experimental Zionists are not as concerned with Israel’s right to be as they are with what Israel could be. We quickly learn through our observations that this place is as imperfect as we are imperfect, but also that it is as perfectible as we are perfectible. Thus we concern ourselves with a more fundamental question: what do we want this Jewish society to look like, to sound like, to smell like, to taste like, to feel like, to act like? And just as important, how can we test these hypotheses in this world and see the resultant Jewish society that they create?
Admittedly, after all this time, I find myself surprised to be able to once again call myself a Zionist. But I can no longer say that I am indifferent to the state of affairs in this country; instead, though I still expect to spend my life in the diaspora, I also plan to support the ongoing, challenging, but essential evolution of Israel towards my hopes, a Jewish state that can truly be a light unto the nations. Among my hopes is that all of us who have found ourselves in a state of silent, irritated indifference when it comes to Israel can find our way to experimental Zionism: instead of talking about Israel’s impossible politics, we can imagine its possible wonders. We can start with the dream, and then will it to be.

Dan Ross is a first year student at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. 

The Heart of the Biennial

I was at my first URJ Biennial, this one held in San Diego from December 11th to 15th, 2013.

Let me present my own personal observations which I would define as “a most remarkable sense of togetherness.” The feeling of wandering around a convention center with some 5,000 other Reform/Progressive, mostly from the United States but with significant contingents from other parts of the world was, to put it mildly, absolutely exhilarating.

During the five days there was hardly a moment when someone didn’t come up to me to introduce her or himself to chat about a common topic. While the human interaction component was certainly welcome, the content of our discussions was particularly significant

The visit to Israel is recalled with warmth and remembered as being highly significant. In many cases, people who I had met in the United States felt the same. If I had only met a handful of friends and colleagues engaging me in issues related to Israel, I would explain it as a localized phenomenon. However, much to my surprise, our interaction came out of the genuine and profound desire to indicate that regardless of where we live “we are family.”

Ari Shavit, one of Israel’s most thoughtful journalists, in an article entitled To my brothers and sisters wrote “People 60 and up cannot live without Israel. Those who are between 40 and 60 generally still have some kind of affinity with Israel. But young Americans in their teens and 20s are in a different world.”

Most of the people I encountered in San Diego were probably 40 and above. However, this is not the time to give up on the younger generation for each generation expresses its desire to be different from the one before it. The marvel of the human spirit is that it questions and re-questions contemporary assumptions. The teens and 20s do undoubtedly have certain problems with Israel, but so do I. Ari Shavit emphasizes that “a common past and a common destiny and a future that must be defined together” is our challenge. I couldn’t agree more!

During the exhilarating five days , my sense that this complex and confusing idea of “Jewish Peoplehood,” the common understandings of Jews throughout the world and the determination to work together, remains central for many of us. Some thousands of years ago a small and vulnerable people set out on a perilous journey to the Promised Land. Moses could only see it from afar whereas we, the beneficiaries of so many who went before us, can visit Israel or decide to live there. How lucky we are!

Paul Liptz is the Director of Education at the Anita Saltz International Education Center of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He was on the Tel Aviv University faculty for 35 years and also lectured at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. He made aliyah one day before the Six Day War.