I wanted to comment on Scott Perlo in the Jewish Journal

January 5, 2012 at 12:04 pm | Posted in israel, politics | 3 Comments

But when I blew past the 700-word limit, I figured I could just post here. By the way, JewishJournal, if you have a word limit, let me know about it up front, not when I click to submit.

Anyway, Rabbi Perlo’s piece suggests that we’ve had a failure of leadership in articulating and disseminating a vision for Israel’s importance. I agree with him that our discourse has become stale, and revolves around left-right politics and a post-Holocaust justification for Israel’s existence. We certainly do need to reformulate the Zionist project, and with it, the Diaspora-Israel relationship. Where I part with Perlo is that he believes that Rabbi David Hartman may have hit on such a formulation. In Perlo’s summation of Hartman,

Israel is the grand experiment of Judaism. It is important, critical, because it is the only place where the totality of the religious, cultural, political and social ideas of Judaism and Jews are expressed through a body politic. Israel is the only place in the world where Judaism is the civilization, and the ideals we claim to hold apply to a living country. For this reason, if for no other, Israel is of central importance to anyone who loves Judaism.

In Rabbi Hartman’s formulation, Israel is Judaism’s grand experiment, and as appealing as that claim is, it has no support. Secular Israelis continue to be alienated from and hostile towards Judaism. Liberal Jewish movements haven’t had much success in convincing Israelis otherwise. Many of the ultra-Orthodox reject the legitimacy of the state, or at least deny its religious validity. And the religious Zionists have placed the Land of Israel above the State of Israel in their thinking.

The idea of the State as an entity where Jews govern themselves was once a powerful organizing principle. Today it is a tired reality, and a fragmented reality at that. Governing the Palestinians for forty years is one aspect of the problem, but even within Israel proper, the role of non-Jewish minorities poses questions as yet unanswered about the Jewish character of the state. American Judaism’s struggle for recognition, respect, and freedom of worship has deflated the positive feelings of American’s most talented young Jewish leadership towards Israel. And as Israel’s power has grown to regional super-power status, both Israelis and Americans are less willing to give Israel a free pass to use security concerns to justify any course of action.

Why is Israel important? The question itself is outrageous. Millions of people live in Israel, under Israeli rule. Some are members of our tribe, some are our coreligionists, some are ideological fellows. And some are none of these. Israel is another human effort to create a just, happy, and productive society, springing from Jewish thought, culture, and heritage. The question we need to pose is not why Israel is important, but what values should Israel commit itself to, and how should it express those values. In America we value, freedom, democracy, and economic opportunity. Do we value the same in Israel? Should we? If not, how do we explain why our values in Israel are different? Those are questions we have elided for too long, questions that young people are not hearing answers for, and ultimately, questions that we are not too sure of ourselves.

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“Why is Israel important?” is a legitimate question. How would the world be different if Israel didn’t exist? Why is its continued existence necessary for the world?
Other countries don’t have to answer these questions but that’s simply because no other country is the target of a multi-national trillion dollar campaign to wipe it out!
The question for Jews is: what do we do with Israel now that we have it?
This for me is why I am Dati Leumi. Secular Zionism accomplished incredible things in building up and establishing the State, no question, but that philosophy had no follow-up when the question “Why do we need Israel?” was then asked. After all, if we can be just as happy in New York and Miami, why do we need to “occupy” so- called Palestinian land? Why cause all the tzurus by insisting on being in this one particular spot?
Secular Zionism has no answer. A secular Jew can be happy in Miami. Chareidism has no answer. A Chareidi can be happy in Brooklyn. A religious Zionist cannot be happy anywhere but Israel because he sees the restablishing of Israel not as a post-Holocaust lifeboat, a good idea or just something that happened but as evidence that God is moving history forward towards the final redemption. Israel is no grand experiment but a return of Judaism as a national entity instead of a religious one. It is this goal, to establish a modern Jewish state with the Torah as its constitution, that should be the goal of Jews in Israel.

Comment by Garnel Ironheart— January 11, 2012 #

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I’m not sure I understand – is the question of whether Israel is important legitimate, or is it only raised because of the massive international campaign to wipe Israel out (l’shitascha) ?

Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish and democratic state isn’t necessary for the world. We might prefer such a world, but I don’t think we can go further than that.

Finally, I think the question of why do we need Israel is answered by secular Zionism. Actually, secular Zionism is built upon that question: Israel is the answer to the question of how will the Jewish people successfully live free of racism and in safety on this earth. Herzl and the classical Zionists were race-nationalists who believed that each ethnic group/race should have its own country, with Jews being no exception. The happy condition of the secular Jew in Miami is, according to Zionists, a temporary illusion that antisemitic moments like the Dreyfuss Affair showed. Eventually, the non-Jew would turn against the Jew, no matter how enlightened the non-Jewish country seemed to be.

Religious Zionism doesn’t really change the equation much. Saying that Jews should live in Israel and build a religious state because God said so is, semantically, the equivalent of saying “I know how the universe is supposed to turn out.” It doesn’t answer any question for anyone not already convinced of the same truth, and is in fact alienating to anyone who doesn’t believe.

Comment by rejewvenator— January 11, 2012 #

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It’s nice to see a new post from you!

Comment by Friar Yid— January 29, 2012 #

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Rejewvenate!