Category Archives: Jewish History

Israeli Independence vs Naqba – Finding the Truth in Two Different Narratives – Part I

01 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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In March 2011, the Israeli Knesset passed a law called the “Naqba Law” that would punish public institutions for any reference to the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948 as “Naqba” (meaning “catastrophe”). The Knesset law enables Israel to deny state funding to institutions that question the country’s existence as a Jewish state. The debate that led to the vote was heated and angry.

Right-wing Israeli lawmakers who introduced the law insisted that it was meant to defend Israel against delegitimization efforts within Israel and internationally by Israel’s enemies. Israeli liberals argued that the measure is inherently undemocratic because it restricts free speech, even though this particular speech challenges the existence of the Jewish State of Israel itself.

How should we Jews in the Diaspora regard this law? What does it mean for Israel’s democracy and Jewish character?

Though the law has been on the books already for more than a year, the issue came up on Israeli Independence Day when Palestinian Arabs took to the streets to demonstrate what they believe is a basic injustice to their rights and national identity. The law will likely be recalled, as well, on the anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War (this coming Tuesday, June 5) when Israel took the West Bank and Golan Heights in a war of self-defense imposed upon it by its Arab neighbors.

In the interests of a future peace agreement (should it ever come about) an accurate understanding of the true history of what happened in 1948 is important for Israelis and the Palestinians to understand beyond the myths perpetuated in each of their narratives.

In this blog and the next, as best as I can, I will offer a reconstruction of some of that history. Much has been written about it by Israeli historians on both the left and the right, as well as by scholars internationally. I have sought to glean only a few essential truths of that history.

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was the most important and positive event in 2000 years of Jewish history because it meant the return of the Jewish people to our ancient national homeland and a return to history itself. There the flowering of the Jewish national spirit could occur, and indeed it has over the course of these past 64 years.

However, as extraordinarily inspirational as the establishment of Israel has been for the Jewish people it has been just as extraordinarily negative for the Palestinians, who call that event the “Catastrophe” (Naqba).

Despite the Palestinians within the Green Line (the armistice line established in 1949) living as full citizens in the only democracy in the Middle East, and despite their having greater freedom and more rights and opportunities in education, law, government, politics, medicine, religion, and the arts than in any other Arab or Islamic nation, Israel’s Independence represents for Palestinians what they regard as a great loss to their national identity and heritage, the loss of control over their ancestral homeland, their being prevented from returning to their homes from which they fled and were driven out, and the ability  to establish their own state.

The Israeli narrative is, of course, much different. Theodor Herzl promised that the Jews would settle a barren wasteland devoid of people and build a new society and a state of their own. Indeed, the Zionist pioneers came and made the desert bloom. In doing so they confronted many obstacles, the most cruel being the ongoing terrorism and war.

Despite the violence against it Israel’s successive governments reached out to Israel’s Arab neighbors to make peace and asked that all the nations of the Middle East join to create a new prosperous, creative and cooperative region.

Two different worlds and two different perspectives! Each narrative is built upon fact and myth. However, peace will depend on mutual clarity about the objective truths of history, what happened, where injustice really lies, and the measure of accountability each side must take for its role in the perpetuation of the conflict. Confronting the truth of our mutual history, however, is so very difficult because that history carries much pain and loss, resentment, distrust, fear, and hatred.

We and the Palestinians are enmeshed in a very bad “marriage.” As in any bad marriage the only reasonable result is first separation and then divorce. With a successful divorce must come compromise, a division of property, and a sharing of the “children” (i.e. those things that both sides cherish). Divorce is always difficult and far too often there is very bad blood between the former partners, but if each partner wishes to live out a better life for itself and its progeny, it is necessary.

Following Shabbat I will offer a short list of “Claims/Myths” and the facts that abide within those claims and myths.

Shabbat Shalom.

To be continued…

Beinart-Suissa Debate – Afterthoughts

21 Monday May 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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In my introductory remarks to the Peter Beinart-David Suissa debate at Temple Israel of Hollywood last Wednesday evening (May 16), I said the following to help give political context to what we would be hearing from each speaker:

In a thoughtful piece published this past week, Professor Shaul Magid of Indiana University, wrote that the response and rancor around Peter Beinart’s book “The Crisis of Zionism” represented four broad groups in the American and Israeli communities – the ideological left and right and the pragmatic left and right. A brief word about each:

Those in the ideological left question the viability of a Jewish state preferring a liberal democratic state in a one-state solution; this means the end of the Jewish State of Israel.

The ideological right includes a combination of Zionist revisionists and theological messianists and understands territorial maximalism (i.e. a Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea) as necessary for Jewish survival; this might mean the survival of a Jewish state, but this “Israel” would not be a democracy because the Jewish minority would rule over the Arab majority.

The pragmatic left often uses rhetoric from the ideological left but emphasizes the welfare of the Jewish people and the importance of a Jewish democratic State of Israel. They are concerned that the occupation of the West Bank is compromising Israel’s democracy. Included among these are J Street, Shalom Achshav, B’tzelem, and Peter Beinart.

The pragmatic right uses the rhetoric of liberalism but looks to Jewish history rather than theology and argues that security must be the over-riding priority for the Jewish state in any two-states solution. This group includes AIPAC, The Shalem Center in Jerusalem, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and David Suissa.

A few thoughts:

1. The debate was friendly and civil. Each speaker spoke and I asked questions. Peter Beinart answered every question I posed and addressed every claim David Suissa made. Peter’s remarks were factually based, nuanced, pro-Israel, pro-peace, critical of Palestinian terror and mistakes, critical of Israeli policy vis a vis the Palestinians, and pragmatically left.

2. David Suissa’s presentation was emotionally based, rhetorically charged, and avidly pro-Israel. He avoided answering two of my questions but eventually did, the first on the Arab demographic threat to Jewish democratic nationalism in a “greater Israel,” and the second on whether Jerusalem should serve as the capital of both Israel and Palestine in an end-of-conflict peace agreement.

3. I asked both men that if Israel and the Palestinians were unable to agree on a two-states for two-peoples solution, which would they prefer? (1) A single Jewish state over “greater Israel,” or (2) a partitioned land accommodating two states, Israel and Palestine. In #1, Israel’s Jewish character would be preserved but it would lose its democracy. In #2, Israel would be able to retain a Jewish majority and its democracy. Peter affirmed #2. David challenged the premise that Israel holding onto the land it currently controls would mean that there would be an Arab majority. He made this claim by excluding Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians from a Palestinian state. The bottom line for David was that he did not accept partition of the land nor a shared Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and Palestine. Indeed, he seemed not to support two-states for two-peoples. That being the case, I mis-characterized him in my introduction as a part of the “pragmatic right.” Rather, David is likely ideologically right.

4. David claimed that only 1% of the West Bank is populated by Jewish settlements. The actual percentage is far greater because each settlement includes security zones surrounding it, and both the settlement and its respective security zone are part of land controlled by Jewish regional councils. Taking everything together, settlements in fact control 40% of the West Bank. Of that 40%, both B’tzelem and Settlement Watch of Shalom Achshav (two Israeli human rights organizations) claim that one third is owned by private Palestinians. Peter made these points during the debate, but he passed over them quickly and I felt it important to restate them here.

The debate between Peter Beinart and David Suissa reflects the vast difference of opinion and perspective that animates the discussion both within the American Jewish community and in Israel itself on the nature of the conflict and the possible solutions. One of my Israeli friends, a significant leader in the State of Israel, watched the debate and reflected that to solve this problem will require new and original thinking because the status quo is unsustainable for Israel as both a Jewish and a democratic state.

I believe that Peter Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism is a must-read for anyone interested in peace, Israel’s security, viability and future.

To view the entire debate see:

http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/peter_beinart_and_david_suissa_debate_zionisms_crisis_20120517/

 

Peter Beinart and David Suissa Debate “A Crisis of Zionism” – Jewish Journal Web-site Live Stream

17 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Social Justice

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Last night (Wednesday, May 16) Peter Beinart (author of A Crisis of Zionism) and David Suissa (President of The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles) debated before a crowd of 450 people at Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles the role of the American Jewish community vis a vis Israel, the arguments left and right relative to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the challenges to democracy and the Jewish character/demography of the state that a non-resolution of this conflict present. I was honored to moderate the discussion.     

You can watch the entire conversation on the Jewish Journal web-site by clicking here –   http://www.jewishjournal.com/live_broadcast/article/live_broadcast_suissa_vs_beinart_-_is_zionism_in_crisis_20120511/

I recommend reading Peter’s book as it spells out clearly, factually and historically what has become of the Zionist enterprise and how the American Jewish establishment (i.e. AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the ADL, and AJC, among others) and community have changed and evolved over the course of the past 64 years since Israeli statehood.

Though vilified by some on the Jewish and Israeli right for the positions he takes in this book and in other writings, others have praised Peter’s book including President Bill Clinton, philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, former Congressman and Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission Lee H. Hamilton, and Naomi Chazan, former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and President of the New Israel Fund.

President Clinton said the following:

“Peter Beinart has written a deeply important book for anyone who cares about Israel, its security, its democracy, and its prospects for a just and lasting peace. Beinart explains the roots of the current political and religious debates within Israel, raises the tough questions that can’t be avoided, and offers a new way forward to achieve Zionism’s founding ideals, both in Israel and among the diaspora Jews in the United States and elsewhere.”


Peter Beinart’s Only Los Angeles Appearance – Wednesday, May 16 at Temple Israel of Hollywood

13 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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In his recent book The Crisis of Zionism, journalist and writer Peter Beinart argues that a dramatic shift is taking place in Israel and America. In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organizations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. He has asserted that in the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream-the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals-may die.

On Wednesday evening, May 16 at 7:00 PM at Temple Israel of Hollywood, Peter Beinart will make his only Los Angeles appearance. He will be in dialogue/debate with David Suissa, President of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. I will moderate this conversation. For those who cannot be present, the debate will be streamed live on the LA Jewish Journal Website. For those attending, plan to arrive early as people will be seated first come-first serve. We expect a large crowd.

Peter Beinart is Senior Political Writer at The Daily Beast, the online home of Newsweek Magazine, editor of the Daily Beast blog “Open Zion” and the former Editor of New Republic Magazine. Most recently he is author of The Crisis of Zionism (Times Books, 2012) which has sparked international debate as well as both praise and condemnation.

President Bill Clinton had this to say about The Crisis of Zionism:

“Peter Beinart has written a deeply important book for anyone who cares about Israel, its security, its democracy, and its prospects for a just and lasting peace. Beinart explains the roots of the current political and religious debates within Israel, raises the tough questions that can’t be avoided, and offers a new way forward to achieve Zionism’s founding ideals, both in Israel and among the Diaspora Jews in the United States and elsewhere.”

The May 16 evening of conversation is sponsored by Temple Israel of Hollywood and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, as well as co-sponsored by five sister Los Angeles synagogues, Temple Emanuel, Temple Isaiah, Ikar, Beit Chayim Chadashim, and Kol Ami.

This past Saturday,  The Crisis of Zionism was reviewed by David Lauter in the Los Angeles Times, Calendar Section, page 1.  For more information about Peter Beinart and The Crisis in Zionism, see these links:

* Huffington Post – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/peter-beinart-the-crisis-of-zionism_b_1400719.html

* The Jewish Daily Forward – http://forward.com/articles/155044/what-stirred-hornet-s-nest/?p=all#ixzz1spZzXVRh

* Don Futterman in Haaretz – http://www.haaretz.com/misc/iphone-article/the-important-message-of-peter-beinart-1.422949

* The Times of Israel’s review by Jonathan Miller – http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-crisis-of-peter-beinart/

* Shaul Maggid in Religion Dispatches – http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/politics/5891/peter_beinart%E2%80%99s_controversial_the_crisis_of_zionism%3A_right_diagnosis,_wrong_treatment

* Jonathan Rosen’s in NYT Sunday Book Review – http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/politics/5891/peter_beinart%E2%80%99s_controversial_the_crisis_of_zionism%3A_right_diagnosis,_wrong_treatment

* Times of Israel Blog of Shaul Magid – http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/peace-partners-a-question-for-the-pragmatic-right/

 

 

Confused about the New Unity Government in Israel? Read this!

10 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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Bernie Avishai writes on Open Zion on The Daily Beast about what Prime Minister Netanyahu’s and new Kadima leader Mofaz’s merger in the government might mean.

It is certainly sly political maneuvering on both sides, and it might give Bibi a way to avoid challenging the authority of the Supreme Court on the one hand and at the same time sidelining Liberman’s Russian right-wing Yisrael Bateinu party as well as extremist religious and settler parties. Everything will depend, of course, on what the real deal is with Mofaz (i.e. what he will get out of joining the governing coalition) and whether Bibi wants to make history as a peace maker.

Mofaz is a former Defense Minister, and he says he wants progress with the peace effort and the Palestinians. Now that the voice of Bibi’s father has passed into Eternity, will the Prime Minister be released from his father’s ideological fundamentalist extremism to be the practical politician many say he is?

Once again, Israel is ever-dynamic, interesting and democratic.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/08/netanyahu-s-globalists.html

PS – For those of you living in Los Angeles, next Wednesday, May 16 at 7 PM at Temple Israel of Hollywood (my synagogue) we will welcome Peter Beinart in his ONLY Los Angeles appearance as he enters into dialogue with David Suissa, the President of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal and founder of Olam Magazine.

Peter Beinart is the political editor of The Daily Beast, the former editor of the New Republic Magazine, and the author of the controversial book The Crisis of Zionism.

President Bill Clinton has said that those who care about the future security, democracy and peace of Israel, should read this book! The book has been both praised and vilified, as has Beinart himself.

The evening will be sponsored by Temple Israel of Hollywood and the Los Angeles  Jewish Journal, and co-sponsored by 5 sister synagogues – Temple Emanuel, Temple Isaiah, Ikar, Beit Chayim Chaddashim, and Kol Ami. All are welcome. Come early.

The entire event will be live-streamed on the Jewish Journal Web-site.

“Yehudei America: Limdu ivrit!” (American Jews: Learn Hebrew!)

03 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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In a recent article published in the Jewish Forward (April 13, 2012), [http://davidhazony.typepad.com/david-hazony/2012/04/memo-to-american-jews-learn-hebrew.html] reflecting on the ever-widening cultural gulf between American Jewry and Israelis, the journalist and author David Hazony challenged the American Jew to learn Hebrew. Here is some of what he wrote:

“…there exists no greater threat to Jewish Peoplehood than the cultural disconnect between Israeli and American Jews. And unlike so many of our people’s other problems, this one actually is quite simple to solve – but only if American Jews decide they want to solve it… Growing up in American public schools, I studied French for six years. By 12th grade I’d read Moliere, Camus, Voltaire and Ionesco in the original. Later in life I was able to revive my French in a couple of months of a weekly conversation class, and after a number of brief visits to Paris I was getting by, or at least making a noble effort… such an education gave me something much deeper than just lingual training. It gave me an incredible amount of insight, appreciation, respect and fondness for French culture, French thinking, French joie de vivre…”

Then he says:

“American Jews have to learn Hebrew…there are at least two overwhelming reasons that they should. Leon Wieseltier covered one of them last year, in a jaw-dropping essay called ‘Language, Identity, and the Scandal of American Jewry,’ who said ‘American Jews…have inhumanely and un-Jewishly cut themselves off from the vast oceans of their own biblical and rabbinic past because they don’t bother to relate to Hebrew the way that Western countries until recently related to Greek and Latin – as a basic building block of cultural literacy. The assumption of American Jewry that it can do without a Jewish language is an arrogance without precedent in Jewish history. And this illiteracy, I suggest, will leave American Judaism and American Jewishness forever crippled and scandalously thin… Without Hebrew, the Jewish tradition will not disappear entirely in America, but most of it will certainly disappear.”

Hazony continues that

“…the time is coming very soon – if it has not already arrived – when one will not be able to fully participate in Jewish cultural life without knowing Hebrew. This is true in part because of the sheer quantity of cultural creativity, but also because of the trends: Israel is quickly growing in wealth, population and global influence, while American Jews are, in the optimistic view, marching in place. American Jews have much to contribute to Hebrew discourse and our collective Jewish future. Their tradition of tolerance and religious liberalism, their democratic experience and their philanthropic habits, to name just a few things. But they will do so only if they dispense with the ignorance-as-wisdom arrogance that locks them out of Hebrew-based culture.”

It is true that in the United States Jewish scholarship is available in English. It is true as well that English is spoken widely in Israel. Consequently, many American Jews have concluded that they do not need to speak or read Hebrew to get along. What is lost, however, is something deeper and more essential that goes to the heart of Jewish peoplehood.

The language of prayer and Jewish faith, of Torah, philosophy, mysticism, and literature, of Zionism and the Israeli experience is Hebrew – not English. If we American Jews are ever to be a part of the culture of the Jewish people, we must be able to converse in the language of our people.

David Hazony was spot on when he said, “Yehudei America: Limdu ivrit!” (American Jews: Learn Hebrew!) – one letter, one word, one phrase, one verse, one idea at a time!

Yom Haatzmaut – Reflections 2012

24 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Holidays, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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Who could have imagined 64 years ago that Israel would become as economically viable, politically and militarily strong, technologically advanced, and creatively cutting-edge as it is today?

Who would have dreamed that Israel’s Jewish population would grow from 600,000 souls in 1948 to 5.5 million today?

Who would have thought that after having had to fight seven wars, endure two Intifadas and bear-up against ongoing terrorist attack that the Jewish state would remain democratic and free despite little peace with its neighbors and no resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

All told, even with her imperfections and challenges, Israel is a remarkable nation, testimony to the spirit, will, ingenuity, aspiration, creativity, and sacrifice of generations. Today Israel is like none other in the world, more culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse, more intellectually and academically productive. The depth and breadth of her accomplishments are nothing shy of breath-taking.

On the occasion of Israel’s 64th Independence Day, Jews the world over are well to take stock, celebrate her accomplishments, mourn and honor her dead, and ask what unique place the Jewish state holds in the innermost heart, mind and soul of the Jewish people.

This is no easy task. Permit me to offer some thoughts as I reflect on Israel’s meaning:

Israel is far more than a political refuge as envisioned by political Zionists. It is more than the flowering of the Jewish spirit as dreamed about by cultural Zionists. It is more than the fulfillment of Jewish memory and religious longing.

Israel starts with the land, with Jerusalem at its heart, for the land has been a key focus of Jewish consciousness for three millennia. The land of Israel is at the center of our history and is an essential element of our Jewish faith. But Israel is far more than land.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it this way in his moving volume Israel – An Echo of Eternity: “Israel reborn is an answer to the Lord of history who demands hope as well as action, who expects tenacity as well as imagination.” (p. 118) “The inspiration that goes out of Zion today is the repudiation of despair and the example of renewal.” (p. 134)

In this spirit the Zionists sought to create a new kind of a Jew, at home in the land, self-activated, self-realized, independent, creative, and free. They understood, however, the limitations of their state-building endeavor. Heschel said it this way: “The State of Israel is not the fulfillment of the Messianic promise, but it makes the Messianic promise plausible.” (Ibid. p. 223) In other words, the political state is not and cannot be regarded as an end in itself. Rather, the Jewish state represents a challenge and a promise that will rise or fall based on how our people and Israel’s government uses or misuses the power that comes with national sovereignty. With this in mind a Jewish state worthy of its mission must challenge our individual and communal ethics, our nationalism, our humanity, and our faith.

May Israel be an or lagoyim, a light to the nations, and may her citizens and all the inhabitants of the land know justice and peace. 

[Yom Haatzmaut is celebrated on the 5th of Iyar which falls this year on Friday, April 27. We will celebrate at Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles during Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday evening beginning at 6:30 PM in song and poetry, led by our clergy, volunteer choir, quartet and instrumentalists. All are welcome.]

Gunter Grass, Eli Yishai and Israel’s Policy of “Nuclear Ambiguity”

11 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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It is not often that I agree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but I do regarding his reaction to German Nobel Laureate Gunter Grass’s poem “What Must Be Said” that has taken media by storm in the past two weeks. In this poem printed in The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/gunter-grasss-controversial-poem-about-israel-iran-and-war-translated/255549/, Grass repeats the canard that Israel is the most dangerous nation in the Middle East because of its threats of a first strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. He charges hypocrisy given Israel’s own alleged nuclear capability. Netanyahu called such a comparison a “shameful moral equivalence.”

For good reasons Israel maintains a policy of “nuclear ambiguity.” The Jewish state is thought to have begun developing nuclear capability decades ago because of threats by her neighbors to destroy “the Zionist entity” and drive the Jewish people into the sea. Most Arab nations now accept the existence of Israel even if they do not have formal peace treaties with her. However, threats to destroy the Jewish state have not stopped. Today, Iran is the chief culprit.

Given Iran’s denial of Israel’s right to exist, we cannot ignore the significant differences between Iran and Israel when it comes to their each having nuclear weapons. First, Israel is a democracy and Iran is a military theocratic dictatorship. Second, Israel has never called for wiping any other nation off the map as Iran repeatedly does concerning Israel. Third, no other nuclear nation (e.g. Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia, or the United States) has ever threatened genocide against another people as Iran has done towards Israel. And fourth, no other nuclear nation has repeatedly denied the historicity of the Holocaust as has Iran, which leads a reasonable observer to conclude that fanaticism drives Iran’s foreign policy.

To complicate matters, a report in Haaretz this week reveals that there have been secret meetings between Israeli and Finnish officials on the issue of the International Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference scheduled for Helsinki in December, and that the Obama Administration wants to discuss a Middle East nuclear-free-zone at that gathering. Should this conference result in a demand to inspect Israel’s nuclear facilities, the ambiguity that is at the core of the Jewish state’s deterrent strategy would be destroyed. I would hope that the United States would push for an indefinite delay of this conference until such time as the Middle East stabilizes following the Arab spring.

All this being said, for Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai to take the step as he did last week to bar the poet Gunter Grass from physically entering Israel is an overreaction, and is unbecoming of the only democracy in the Middle East that values free speech. Alan Dershowitz, who does not make a habit of criticizing Israeli officials, made an exception with Minister Yishai when the Harvard professor wrote that Yishai’s decision was “both foolish and self-defeating,” and that the “ridiculous poem doesn’t pose any security threat to Israel that would justify his physical exclusion from the country.”

In truth, there are two main security threats to Israel. The first is Israel’s actual outside enemies who threaten harm, and the second is the anti-democratic trend promoted regularly by the current Israeli government. If left unchallenged, this official intolerance and demagoguery will chip away at Israel’s own democratic traditions and leave it just like the other oppressive nations in the region.

 

 

 

The Future of Pro-Israel Activism

28 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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I have just returned from the 3rd annual J Street Conference in Washington D.C. attended by 2500 pro-Israel pro-peace activists from around the country and world. I was invited to deliver a statement to the plenary on the future of pro-Israel activism, and I offer those remarks here.

“Good afternoon. My name is John Rosove and I am the Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles. I am the Future of Pro-Israel activism because I believe that progressive Zionism is the best assurance that Israel will remain secure, Jewish and democratic.

Gloria Steinem was right when she said that “All politics is personal,” and so before I share a bit about how my Pro-Israel activism has shaped my life and rabbinate, I want to say a few words about my roots in Zionist and Jewish leadership.

In the late 19th century half my family left Ukraine for Canada and the United States and the other half went to Palestine. Those who made aliyah were religious Jews and arrived in Jerusalem in 1880. Along with Jeremy Ben-Ami’s great-grandparents, my family were among the original settlers of Petach Tikva when they moved there in 1882. My great-great uncle was famous as Petach Tikva’s first shomer, policeman, and as both Theodor Herzl’s and Chaim Weizmann’s body guard whenever they visited the land. Another cousin became the founding professor of the Department of Near Eastern Languages at the Hebrew University, translated the Koran and A 1001 Nights to Hebrew. Yet another helped facilitate the Camp David Accords as a Knesset attorney, and a third, Ruby Rivlin, is the sitting Speaker of the Knesset.

In Los Angeles, my uncles and aunts were top leaders of the United Jewish Appeal, the Jewish Federation, the American Jewish Committee, Brandeis Camp Institute, and the Jewish Centers Association in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

I was tutored in classic mid-century Jewish liberalism and claim as my childhood rabbis Leonard Beerman and Richard Levy who mentored me in civil disobedience during the civil rights and Vietnam eras.

Taken together, all roads led me to serious engagement in Jewish religious, communal and Zionist life. My passion for Israel was especially inspired in those heady years immediately after the 1967 Six Day war and reflecting the sentiment of Yehuda Halevi, though my body is here b’kitzei maarav (at the far ends of the west), libi b’mizrach (my heart lives in the east). I feel as at home there as I do here and when I am not there, I yearn for her. My adult life has been in part a struggle to join my two central worlds as a liberal American Jew and an ohev am u-m’dinat Yisrael (lover of the people and state of Israel).

It is therefore as a Progressive Reform Zionist that I have found my true and natural home. As such I take the view that Jewish nationalism must envision our people’s independence as a means of serving humanity as a whole, that we might fulfill Isaiah’s vision to be an or lagoyim, “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6). I believe that social justice must be applied to all the major issues confronting Israeli society including Israeli Arab and Palestinian rights, minority rights, immigrant worker rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, poverty, education, and justice. Israel becoming a just society in every way needs to be the endgame if Israel is to live its own Declaration of Independence. It isn’t enough for us here in the west to mouth the right words. We have to be prepared to put our money where our mouths are, to visit Israel often, to support those progressive forces there working towards these good, just and decent ends, and, for some of us, to make aliyah.

Just as we expect much of the Jewish state, we Diaspora Jews have an obligation to give back to Israel not just our love and ideas, but of our time, expertise and treasure, especially when it’s hard to do so, when we feel frustrated, angry and alienated by Israel’s government policies and direction.

The organizations I support (e.g. Rabbis for Human Rights, B’tzelem, New Israel Fund, Shalom Achshav, the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, the Israel Religious Action Center, and Hiddush) represent a vision of Israel that is Jewish, democratic, pluralistic, compassionate, and just. They and others like them need strong American Jewish support just as we American Jews need Israel to embody the values we cherish…We need Israel and Israel needs us – it’s a relationship that must be intimate and mutual. The Talmud (Pesachim 112a) makes this point when it says, Yoter ha-egel rotzeh linok, parah rotzei l’hanik – “Even more than the calf needs to suck, the mother needs to suckle.”

Though my synagogue is located at the far ends of the west, I feel grateful that by and large my community has embraced my progressive Zionist vision. Even so, I have my share of members who don’t share that vision, and who I know I have irritated over the years. The challenge for me as their rabbi is…to show them sincere respect for their vision, as different as it is from what I believe, even as I hope they respect mine as different as it is from theirs.

Over many years I and many in my community have created and nurtured a safe and open space to talk about Israel and engage multiple perspectives and viewpoints. It’s through this kind of robust dialogue that religious and community leaders can best support Israel.

Even so, I’ve been attacked for my progressive Zionist activism. I was especially criticized when my synagogue hosted Jeremy Ben-Ami this past spring in dialogue with David Suissa, the President of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, an equally passionate, articulate and intelligent Israel advocate, who incidentally, is speaking at this conference after Jeremy invited him when they appeared together at Temple Israel of Hollywood.

I had already been tagged communally as a “J Street Rabbi” for articles I penned in support of J Street’s vision and activism, and in this role I know that I’ve been dismissed by many in the LA Jewish community as being beyond the pale of “acceptable” pro-Israel activism.

I know and you know that we are not beyond the pale. Our pro-Israel pro-peace positions represent, according to recent surveys, not only the majority in the American Jewish community but also that of hundreds of thousands of Israelis. More importantly, progressive pro-Israel activism is the future because the alternative, which represents the status quo (i.e. the brutal occupation and submission of another people), is what most endangers Israel’s integrity and existence and its future as a Jewish and democratic state.

Chazak chazak v’nitchazek. May we be strong and together strengthen each other. Amen!