My introduction to Israeli elections came in 1992, when, as a fairly uneducated and certainly naïve 19-year old volunteer on Kibbutz K’far Menachem (about midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv), I watched the elderly founders of the kibbutz cheer the election of Yitzhak Rabin. Now, they seemed to declare, we can rest easy, the country is in the proper hands. At that point, I understood about as much of what they meant and had experienced as the chickens I oversaw in the lul (or, chicken house), but their belief in the power of the election, in the power of the government – at least what they believed to be the right government – was inspiring. That inspiration stayed with me and led me to study the country and the conflict that government was supposed to end more through my next three years of college, ultimately bringing me back to Israel in the April 1996, to volunteer for the Labor Party (although this election featured direct voting for prime minister, our work focused primarily on the election of Shimon Peres to be Prime Minister). The memory of the kibbutznikim and their passion for the future, rooted in so many dreams from the past, drove me to cash in my savings from my post-college jobs, crash in a Tel Aviv youth hostel, and show up at the Labor party offices to say I was there to help. I lucked out and was hooked up with a small group of volunteers who spent our days driving around the country, distributing the materials and the message of hope and strength that we believed Peres stood for. In the end, Israelis decided they did not want those materials (they occasionally told me so with spit or a car door opened into my hip as I stood at an intersection with a banner) or the message. Even though I was an outsider, I nevertheless felt that I was a part of a real national debate, national discussion. For example, I will never forget my partner from Labor picking up an Orthodox hitchhiker in our decked-out Labor-mobile. One would have expected an intolerable level of hostility among us; it was somewhat surprising he took the ride in the first place. But although there was some hostility, it was less at a personal level and more about the fervor of the disagreement on the deeply-held views about the country’s future. The conversation flew from the moment his door closed, and although my college Hebrew studies caught about 25% of what was said between my partner and our passenger, I felt comforted by the notion that this was what an election could be: a moment for the country to speak with itself, to engage, to choose. I have never been quite so engaged with American elections, and although I spend a lot of time thinking about them – probably never more than this one – I am admittedly never quite as engaged as I am with an Israeli election. Perhaps it’s these early experiences; perhaps it’s a notion that election results somehow “mean” more, impact the direction of the country and the future more directly in Israel than in the U.S. (although George W. Bush has gone a long way to dispelling that one); perhaps it’s a comfort in engaging with problems at a distance, rather than the ones closest to home. So, with the Olmert announcement last week that he will not seek to continue to lead Kadima, again I find myself reading the Israeli papers more closely than the ones at home. But I keep thinking back to those kibbutznikim from 1992, most of them likely deceased by now, and all of the activity and energy I experienced in 1996, and wondering whether that energy, that sense of real possibility will be the tenor of the next several months, either within the Kadima primaries or in a likely general election. Now that I have a “real” job and two kids (and debt), I know I can’t pick up for a couple of months and volunteer again. But I know what my hope is for the election, from afar: to believe that Israel is taking the moment to speak with itself, to engage, to choose. Not just a leader, but a national identity. I think not of the debates over whether to engage with Hamas, how to continue with the Syria track, what the pace of settlement evacuation should be, if anything. I think instead of the issues that I have been thinking about over the past few weeks in the Israeli press: n the head of the General Security Service indicating that Israel’s policy of deterrence through force may not be working; n the government failing to live up to a special commission’s recommendations as to how to take proper care of Holocaust survivors, leaving many of them impoverished and voiceless (including Ha’aretz calling for survivors to block the entrance to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem); n settlers threatening both daily retaliation — and a libel lawsuit — against the Israel Defense Forces because the settlers claim the IDF falsely accused them in the media of a knife attack; n the continued criticism of human rights group B’tselem for distributing cameras to Palestinians so as to capture IDF abuses (with only tepid criticism of the soldiers themselves); n the “citizenship law” (preventing Palestinians from the West Bank who marry Israeli citizens from obtaining residency permits in Israel, thus denying them unification with their spouses) continues to be extended; n Only 46% of Israeli seniors in high school passed the matriculation exams. All of these articles made me shake my head for one reason or another, and think that a new election might bring a moment of real change. I realize that many of these seem like mere policy issues: how can we educate kids better, or what are the best means by which to deal with external threats. But all of them touch on much deeper issues of what Israel is, both for its own citizens and for the Jews of the diaspora: who is an Israeli; how does Israel build a future for its children, what kind of social welfare system – and not merely welfare on the financial level — is appropriate in 2008; who is the IDF, and what is it protecting and defending? And why? I am not an Israeli, and I don’t believe the answers I have come to over the years (by building on my earlier experiences to then spend time living in Ramallah, in Haifa, in Jerusalem, and working on a lot of Israel/Palestine-related issues) to the above questions are necessarily the right ones for Israel, even though I hope they are. In the end, all I hope is that another 23 year-old American Jew is flying to Israel now to engage in these debates, to see them first-hand. I hope he or she will leave behind what they have picked up in Hebrew School, from their Israel on Campus Coalition or AIPAC publications, or from their attendance at Students for Justice in Palestine events. I hope they travel around the country and attempt to engage with as many Israelis – Jewish and not — as possible, and I hope they find that these questions being posed, these issues on the table, as I know many of them already are on this site and so many others. Ultimately, I hope we allow ourselves to see this election from afar beyond Olmert and Fayyad, beyond “negotiations,” beyond “final status.” But that we see it for what it can be, what we hope our own to be: a real conversation that leads to a real choice.
There is perhaps no concept more central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the notion of home. While the rest of the world fights over resources or ideologies, the basic issue over which Jews (now Israelis) and Palestinians have fought for over 100+ years is simply where each side will have its home. Every other issue that has arisen along the way is an outgrowth of this one core concept.
It is this concept that I feel the need to come back to on this blog. Semitism.net has, in a way, been a home for me over the past few years: a home where I can express my ideas and feelings about things that mean so much to me and to others, and engage with others who agree or disagree with them. As with so many things that are important, so many homes, I only wish I had more time or energy to spend with it. I only hope this home will have me after such a prolonged absence (and bear with me, as I think I’m a bit rusty at this writing thing).
Of late, my family, too, has been immersed in the question of home. A few months back, we were faced with the possibility of making Jerusalem our home for a period of time, a decision we ultimately – painfully — declined. We have also been trying to sell our house for the past few weeks and have run smack in to the depths and irrational outcomes of the credit crisis and vagaries of the current housing market.
Amid these questions of how to feel at, and where to make, home, I came across an article that has stayed with me for these past few months, in an ever-more painful way. With the question growing more urgent every day of where and how Israelis and Palestinians can make a home for themselves, a home in which everyone may live in some level of peace, here comes Michael Handelzalts to say that every person needs not one homeland, but two.
Mr. Handelzalts makes what is a reasonable argument, at least in a vacuum. Taking the examples of man’s banishment from the Garden of Eden and Abram being sent by God from Ur to Canaan, he argues that the true meaning of God’s purpose for humans is that we should have a homeland of our birth and a homeland of our choosing. In the first instance, such a homeland provides a sense of belonging, of roots; the latter provides a place and space for the individual to be true to their individual self. Handelzalts quotes Gertrude Stein, who wrote that the country of choice is “romantic, it is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.”
Handelzalts then applies this theory to the Jewish community’s presence in Israel. Indicating that Jews are spread out in birth-countries throughout the world “because they misbehave[d],” he explains that the Jewish people ultimately established the State of Israel “to take matters into their own hands, after practically being annihilated by the Nazis.” As I have indicated in the past, I am not troubled by this concept of a Jewish homeland at all; indeed, as my wife and I pondered a few months back, and continue to ponder constantly, where to make our family’s home, the ideals that such a homeland, such a country of choice, should provide are truly unique and painfully difficult to turn away from.
For many, this “country of choice” could be rooted in the geography, geology, or culture of a particular place. Some people just feel more at home in France, Japan, or Kenya than they do in the United States. And there is no doubt that geography, geology, and culture all play a part in making Israel such an alluring country of choice. But, for Jews, Israel then takes the concept of a “country of choice” and raises it to an entirely new level. It becomes a country not just of individual or familial choice, but of communal morality, history, and responsibility; it becomes a home built not on “who can we be here?” but “who should we be here?”
But you also choose something else, a problem that Handelzalts breezes by and, ultimately, is my main concern with Mr. Handelzalts’ premise: his ignoring of the impact that the choice has on the people who were born in that country, or, how your choice of country #2 impacts those for whom that is country #1.
Handelzalts says simply this: “In any event, people who lived here all those years do pose a problem, but it is their problem, since we come – we always do – in peace.”
This site and so many like it are dedicated to struggling with this very concept: whose problem is it when those who choose to live in a place disrupt the lives of those who were born there? How does – or, really, can — a country grow and expand to include both?
We face this question in the United States, with the seemingly never-ending and ever-more painful debate on immigration. Can we who were born here deal with and include those who choose to come? If so, how (and how many)? Do we accept the languages and cultures they bring with them, or do we ask them to leave behind the countries of their birth? That is, by choosing a second country, do we tell them they must leave behind the first?
And regardless, what is the responsibility of each “side” to the other? How do they learn about one another? Who has the right to govern? And after how many generations do the offspring of those who chose a country as their own then become the community for whom it is their birth country, who then seek yet another land of choice?
Handelzalts says, to all of this, that the choosers shouldn’t have to give up their country of birth; he himself admits that he needs his birth country (Poland) as a refuge “when the going gets too tough.” (I’ll leave the implications of that one aside for now). And he also seems to say that the choosers should immediately have the same rights to the place as the native-born.
And with both of those premises, I agree. But what he skips over is the responsibility that each community has to the other. That is, the “problem” of the native cannot so easily be brushed aside by just saying “it is their problem,” whether or not you accept the concept of the Jewish people coming to Palestine in peace. When a homeland is beset by violence, by hatred, by discrimination, it is everyone’s problem, regardless of the benevolent motives of some on each side.
My immediate reaction to the Handelzalts principle of “two countries for every person” was “How on earth can he make such an argument when, in many ways, he has two homes, yet many Palestinians have 0, or maybe 1/2, let alone every refugee and impoverished person in the world? When many Israelis feel so alienated by their society that they now seek to follow his lead and move away from Israel? How blind, or callous can he be?”
But I now see it a bit differently. Perhaps Handelzalts is right, maybe it would be best if each of us had 2 countries. But on one condition – that we recognize the deeper responsibility we must have to those places. Perhaps if Handelzalts accepted his own concept of home, he would attempt to visit a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank or an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev. Or the squalor of foreign workers in Tel Aviv. Or to try to travel from, say, Ramallah to Bethlehem, and understand how Palestinians are forced to live in their own home, at least partially as a result of his own personal choice. And from there, he could understand his responsibility to everyone who calls Israel and Palestine home.
We all have such a responsibility, of course. The fight for the establishment and meaning of Home may be the most central concept in this conflict, but it is also the most central aspect of each of our lives. May we all remember and give meaning to that each and every day. Maybe if God sees that as the basis and core of our struggles, Eden may again be one of those homes.
Wow. Feels a bit strange to write here. Hard, and sad, to believe that almost 6 months have passed since my family and I spent the summer in Jerusalem, and I was able to write from time to time of the experience. Returning to Washington and “real life” has taken us back to the usual pressures and routine, though they have seemed a bit more stressful and time-consuming than before we left.
But the one thing other than family and work that I have been spending my time on (actually the last 15 months) is finally about to come to fruition. The “Breaking the Silence” photo exhibition, which created such a stir when it opened in 2004, and again when it to Europe in 2005 and 2006, is finally coming to the U.S. In fact, it’s more than the original exhibition, which focused exclusively on Hebron. This exhibition features photos and testimonies collected from soldiers who served throughout the Territories. It should be an unforgettable experience.
The exhibition will have 2 stops in the U.S. — Philadelphia and Cambridge/Boston. Two members of Breaking the Silence will be with the exhibition in both cities (different folks in each city) and also doing events around the regions (Yehuda Shaul, for example, will be in DC a few times while the exhibition is in Philadelphia).
In case your memory is hazy, stories about the original exhibition from the Washington Post and CNN.com
may help jog your memories from when this group first got going.
Since the exhibition first launched in Tel Aviv in 2004 (and ultimately hung in the Knesset itself for a time), the group has collected nearly 500 testimonies from IDF soldiers still doing, or just recently finished, their initial service. The group has also continued to work to change the situation in Hebron; indeed, my piece from the summer about my visit to Hebron, was about a trip I took with leaders from Breaking the Silence.
I have uploaded (I hope it worked) flyers for each of the cities, as well as a flyer for what should be a fascinating event at the DC Jewish Community Center. The event is entitled “What Makes an Army Jewish? Ethics and Tradition: The IDF in an Age of Checkpoints, Village Sweeps and Targeted Killings” and will feature Yehuda from Breaking the Silence, an American who volunteered for the IDF and wrote a book called “Lonely Soldier,” and an Orthodox educator.
There is much more I could write about this, but for now, I will only ask that those who see this and live within reach of Philadelphia and Boston do what they can to see the exhibition and to tell as many others as they can about it. These are Israeli soldiers revealing what they did, what they saw, what they became as occupiers. The impact on Palestinian and Israeli societies
is clear, is painful, and is something that screams for change. The question, then, is what will the impact be on American, and in particular American Jewish, society.
Please forward this, forward the flyers, etc. to anyone you can. Hate to make this such a plug-filled post, but I know the readers of semitism.net and their networks are the core of the people who must see this and encourage others to attend.
As the exhibition goes on, I hope to write more, and indeed hope that the exhibition helps me break my own silence of the past 6 months.
Yesterday was Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, which ends eight days from now with Yom Kippur. Between the two holidays, we focus our thoughts on repentance, and on returning to God.
An interesting thing about Judaism is that many of its essential themes were forged at a time of defeat and loss. The notion of a Covenant with a protective God certainly predated the sack of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. In fact, the idea of a patron God who resided in a temple and protected the kingdom was commonplace in the Bronze Age. I think the Judeans and Israelites endowed this with a bit more of a Utopian character than their neighbors, but the basic theology was not terribly different.
It was not until the destruction of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem and the exile of most Judeans to Babylonia that Judaism took on its distinctive character.
One must imagine people who had faced the individual fear, deprivation and loss of a long siege, had seen their agricultural land laid waste, their cities razed, and their God desecrated. Then they were shipped off to exile in Babylonia.
There, for some reason, rather than adopting the gods and customs of the Babylonians, they reconstructed their religion. Now, however, they had no place to carry out animal sacrifices and other rituals, no physical space for worship – no temple in which their God could live among them. They were forced to think about the non-ritual aspects of their religion.
More importantly, their experience challenged the fundamental concept of an inviolable sanctuary protected by an all-powerful deity who would provide eternal protection to the descendants of Abraham.
The religious thinkers of the Judeans reconciled the dilemma this way: They maintained the belief in an omnipotent God, but they incorporated the new idea of a people who could sin. The people could turn away from God, could incur God’s anger and punishment. By turning back to God, they could also earn God’s forgiveness.
The Prophetic writings, which most directly address the exilic situation, are full of expressions of this relationship between God and Israel. God is presented (in patriarchal fashion) as a jealous husband who punishes an unfaithful wife; as a farmer pruning away diseased vines; as a merchant sorting the good fruit from the bad.
In the process, and almost by accident, the nature of God’s existence is re-conceptualized. He is not just the most powerful among a pantheon of deities associated with various nations. Rather, he has power over all nations: he sends an army from afar to punish his unfaithful people. By the same construct, God can be present for the Judeans in Babylonia even though there is no temple. The temple in Jerusalem is thus proposed to have housed God’s Name – not God Himself, who is omnipresent and cannot reside in a physical structure.
In this way, I think, the notion of sin and redemption was forged. It has been of central importance to Judaism and to the religions derived from it, Christianity and Islam.
I will write a bit more in a future post about the resonance this has for me, especially in relation to biology and the medical arts.
A few months back, as I prepared to come to Israel with my family for 3 months, the interim Winograd Commission report came out. As you may recall, the report identified a range of apparent failures during the conduct of the war with Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
The final report is due out in a couple of months, but even the interim report managed to generate a lot of attention and discussion inside Israel. Even without a final report, people demanded the Prime Minister step down; indeed, over 100,000 demonstrated in Tel Aviv calling for his ouster. His approval ratings plummeted into the single digits. Although Olmert has managed to remain in office, the reactions to Winograd were the final blow suffered by former Defense Minister Amir Peretz that led to his defeat to Ehud Barak (and Ami Ayalon, who also beat him out in the first round) in the recent Labor Party primaries.
All of this attention resulted from the report’s initial findings that there were numerous mistakes made in the decision to go to war at all, in the carrying out of the war, and in the overall preparation and state of the Israel Defense Forces.
Now, to top it off, the Winograd Commission has indicated it will investigate whether or not war crimes were committed by Israel during the war. That is, those on the Commission have actually looked at the reports of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others about the use of cluster munitions against civilians and have decided they need to investigate. An internal investigation that admits its possible war crimes were committed (with American-made weaponry, of course).
Who know what they will find? Frankly, it’s near to impossible to imagine the Commission finding that war crimes occurred. The impact and implications would be innumerable. Especially in light of the potential investigation (depending on how the State of Israel responds to the High Court’s recent ruling asking for their opinion on a commission) into the July 2002 targeted killing of Salah Shehadeh in Gaza with a one-ton bomb that left 14 innocent civilians dead.
As Ha’aretz reported, the move to investigate came from both the parents of soldiers and human rights groups:
Gal-On wrote to the Winograd panel several weeks ago to urge such an inquiry. She said she made the request after soldiers’ parents - who had earlier approached Winograd independently - asked her to push for an investigation into whether there was ethical misconduct during the war.
Gal-On said that grave allegations made by human rights organizations, who accused the IDF of committing war crimes and harming Lebanese civilians, strengthened her conviction that these claims must be probed.
But what Winograd ultimately finds on the war crime question doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is that they are looking at it all and actually facing the question of “could we have committed war crimes?” Admitting that such things are even theoretically possible.
Now, I will leave it to others to comment on the implications for the kind of investigations and introspection currently underway (or not) in the United States vis-à-vis Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
What I am concerned about is the absolute silence from those incredibly loud and vocal supporters of Israel’s decision to go to war and to forego cease fire talks in the first weeks.
The whole point of Winograd is to insure, if such insurance is possible, that the mistakes made last summer don’t happen again. But the mistakes they are concerned about are primarily tactical and logistical, as well they should be. As recently reported, the IDF is facing problems of morale and reputation and retention and professionalism of a kind never before seen in its history.
And this is indeed a huge problem. For those who love and believe in the State of Israel, the army is a necessity. Repairing its ability not only to perform in battle, but also to have the people believe it can and will perform to the levels previously expected, is a must. Of course, we may also work to insure that it does so with even higher standards for its rules of engagement and overall conduct, but it is clear that the IDF must be healed. Thus I believe Winograd, regardless of its findings on war crimes, will be an important piece of the puzzle of progress here.
What I fear is the lack of progress in the U.S., whether in the government or in the mainstream Jewish community. And for that, Judge Winograd, you have to come home with me. Because we need your help.
Last year, as you will recall, the rush to support Israel’s decisions, and to fend off all criticism and questioning as near blasphemy, by the Administration, in Congress, and most of all within the mainstream of the American Jewish community could not have been quicker.
In a piece I have quoted before, the Forward quoted leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and Jewish Committee for Public Affairs at the end of July as saying there was “absolute unanimity” and “zero dissent” in the Jewish community that Israel was doing the right thing and should not pursue a cease fire until it was ready. We told our students that Israel was justified in all it was doing, and that they needed to get out there on campus and convince everyone they could that this was the case.
In Congress, “pro-Israel” leaders like Rep. Brad Sherman of California (a Democrat and former member of the House Human Rights Subcommittee, no less) not only backed Israel (and voted almost unanimously), they called for Israel to do more. Inflict – and suffer — more violence and death. As Rep. Sherman wrote in the Jewish Journal in late July of 2006:
Congress rightly has condemned Hezbollah for “engaging in unprovoked and reprehensible armed attacks against Israel on undisputed Israeli territory.” The House passed a resolution by a vote of 410 to 8 supporting “Israel’s right to defend itself, including the right to conduct operations in Israel and in the territory of nations which pose a threat to it.”
…There are some who say the Israeli reaction has been “disproportionate.” It cannot be overstated that the recent outbreak of warfare was not simply a reaction to one event. The truth is that there have been five kidnapping raids and hundreds of missiles fired during six years of attacks. If anyone is going to say that Israel’s reaction is disproportionate, let them say that Israel is doing too little.
That’s right. Using cluster munitions and leveling so much of Beirut and southern Lebanon, while Hizballah continued to target innocent Israelis and inflict casualties on its forces, was “doing too little.”
After the war, when Human Rights Watch released its report on use of cluster munitions, the rush to condemnation in the mainstream was again quick. As he often is, first out of the gate to cry “anti Israel!” was Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.
Once again, Human Rights Watch has reached a skewed conclusion in its review of Israel’s actions in an armed conflict with its neighbors. In an irrational rush to judgment, Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of indiscriminately attacking Lebanese civilians.
The report looks at Israel’s military activity in a vacuum, ignoring the threats to Israel’s security and existence, ignoring the intentions and growing capabilities of its enemies, and ignoring the cynical actions of those who seek to hurt Israel and its citizens on the ground, or to make Israel look bad in the eyes of the world.
Israel, like any country, has a right to defend itself, and does so with every effort to prevent civilian casualties that, while tragic, are unavoidable during war. It is especially difficult to minimize the harm to civilians against an enemy who purposely operates from within the midst of a civilian population in callous disregard of the consequences to those civilians.
What say you now, Mr. Foxman? Will you condemn the Winograd commission for giving validity to these reports? For listening to the Israeli parents of Israeli soldiers, who wonder whether ethical lines were crossed? Will you present “absolute unanimity” in supporting Winograd’s efforts to understand what went wrong in this war you so loudly applauded? Or, instead, should there be “zero dissent” from the notion that Israel could ever do such things?
What about you, Mr. Sherman? Will you write another article in the Jewish Journal, or give a statement on the floor of the House, and ask yourself whether you were wrong? Will you question your urge and those of your colleagues to rush to the podia of Congress and rallies around town to say you “stand with” Israel, whatever you think that may mean? What does it mean? And how does blind support for a war, and refusal to consider its end, meet your definition?
Most importantly, will you consider apologizing to the parents of those Israeli soldiers who now have to ask whether their children engaged in war crimes? Will you apologize to the families of those Israeli soldiers who were killed or injured as a result of your insistence that Israel fight on? To the families of the innocent civilians killed in Israel and Lebanon? To the people of Lebanon as a whole?
Or do you still think Israel did “too little” last summer?
In the end, as far as I can tell, there has been silence from the mainstream Jewish community about Winograd’s meaning for our own relationship to and support of Israel. This report from the American Jewish Committee summed up well the many aspects of the interim report but left out any discussion of AJC’s own vocal support of Israel’s conduct.
Don’t get me wrong. The American Jewish community and American government needed to be there last summer to help the people of Israel through its crisis. One of the main things, however, that we needed to do was to look at the reality, from the luxury of distance and safety that we enjoy. To see the real problems with the war, to focus on the impact on the Lebanese population as well, and to push for a swift and meaningful resolution for all sides.
Instead, we sat on the sidelines and cheered. And held rallies and raised money. And now that those rallies have been shown – by an official Israeli commission – to have been in support of a questionable war, a war that did not achieve its stated ends, where is our introspection? Where is our search for a way to respond to such crises in the future? Where is our insurance that we truly support the people of Israel, to help them find as true a peace as possible, rather than simply backing any and all of its decisions, wise or not?
My 5th summer here has, as they always do, taught me a lot about Israel. Like with any place, I have seen and experienced plenty of good and bad. And when you’re an outsider, it’s often all too easy to focus on the bad parts (as it helps you avoid your own failings). But among the best parts of Israel is its willingness to consider (to a degree, anyway) its flaws. As I was reminded in a comment to a previous post on dailykos, some people choose to live here, rather than be outside preachers like those of us who float in and out for a few months at a time.
And those who live here are aware they are not perfect. Along with that is the notion that they need help from friends and family.
The question is what that help should be. Sadly, I don’t think we Americans, particularly mainstream American Jews, are capable of understanding that right now. We understand only “absolute unanimity” and “zero dissent.”
That is not help. That is not support. That is, in the end, a recipe for more pain and suffering. And, as the polls show, it’s a perfect way to create more distance between American Jews and the mainstream Jewish community.
And so, Judge Winograd, when your work is done here, please come to my home. To America. To Washington. And help us look at ourselves.
Otherwise, I fear you may correct your country’s mistakes but we will not correct ours.
Much has been made in the past several years about the many linkages and comparisons of the United States — indeed the 21st century West in general — and the Roman Empire. In general, these comparisons focus on the lessons of what brought down the Roman Empire, and how we may be repeating or reinventing them.
And indeed, such comparisons can surely be made. But as the Jewish people prepare to commemorate the solemn day of Tisha B’Av (9th day of the Hebrew month of Av), marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples and a host of other calamities, I thought one of the primary lessons from this day, albeit somewhat revised, may actually provide a better guide for understanding the elites and even the middle classes of our world (and I include myself in this category). And I am thinking primarily about those in the United States and Israel, the two places I have experience living in recent times.
That is, we learn on Tisha B’Av that the Second Temple was destroyed because of “sinat chinam,” or “baseless hatred” among the Jewish people. Today, although you will find plenty of baseless hatred among Americans and Israelis, I see the bigger issue facing both societies — the one that I see as much more likely to result in future tragedy — as that of a concept I will call “adishut chinam,” or “baseless complacency.”
First, a quick bit of background. As I mentioned, Tisha B’Av is a day commemorating a series of tragic events in the history of the Jewish people. The first such event derives from the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament and is one of the roots of, not only of the length of the Exodus, but of all of the tragedies that have followed on Tisha B’Av. As summarized in Wikipedia:
On this day, the Twelve spies sent by Moses to observe the land of Canaan returned from their mission. Two of the spies (Joshua and Caleb) brought a positive report, but 10 of the spies brought an “evil report” about the land that caused the Children of Israel to cry, panic and despair of ever entering the “Promised land”. For this, they were punished by God that they would not enter, and that for all generations the day would become one of crying and misfortune for the descendants of the Children of Israel, the Jewish people.
Eventually, though, the Jewish people entered the Land of Canaan and began the process of creating the Land of Israel. King Solomon built the First Temple, which was destroyed in 586 BCE by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. The Jewish people subsequently returned to the Land of Israel, and building of the Second Temple began in 516 (then massively expanded by Herod). The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE.
And what we learn from rabbinic teaching is that the destruction of the Temples did not solely derive from military defeats at the hands of enemies; rather, they were manifestations of failings within the Jewish community itself: sins and sinat chinam. As this lovely lesson puts it (n.b.: “mikdash” is the Hebrew word for “Temple”), these are not separate concepts, but two sides of the same root problem:
The gemara tells us that the first Mikdash was destroyed because the people were involved in three major sins - idolatry, murder, and immorality. The second Mikdash was destroyed because of ’sinat chinam’ - pointless hate. The gemara concludes that we must therefore understand that sinat chinam is equal in its severity to those three cardinal sins.
Similarly, sinat chinam that was predominant at the time of the second Mikdash, reflects the same basic fault in society. Sinat chinam is a direct consequence of selfishness, a direct result of man being totally involved in himself, his interests, his needs, his life.
I would like to suggest that the gemara in Yoma is not simply doing a symmetrical equation between the three cardinal sins and sinat chinam; it is informing us that even though externally the causes of destruction of the first and second Batai Mikdash appear to be different, they are in fact one and the same. The flaw that eventually leads to the three cardinal sins is the exact same flaw that leads to sinat chinam. When man is in the center, when man can see no further than himself, then man is in fact god - when this is the reality of society, there can be no Mikdash, because implicit in the definition of Mikdash is that Hashem is G-d, that Hashem is the center of everything, that we all look to Hashem, and that is what guides our lives.
For those unfamiliar with the day of Tisha B’Av, it may sound like another version of Yom Kippur, as observant Jews fast for 25 hours and consider the concept of sin throughout the day. But this post from Jewlicious contrasts the two quite nicely, as well as answers the key question of how we solve the problem of sinat chinam:
However, whereas Yom Kippur focuses on individual sin, Tisha B’Av focuses more on collective sin
….Sinat chinam is an interesting concept. It encompasses things like envy, greed and self-glorification. It encompasses treating others with contempt. It implies a lack of reason in a religion that almost always demands and insists upon reason. …
According to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Israel’s first chief Rabbi, the second Temple, destroyed by sinat chinam, senseless hatred, will only be rebuilt by ahavat chinam, love without reason.
So taking off on all of these ideas, what I would like to propose is that, although sinat chinam may be rampant in our societies, what we suffer more from is adishut chinam, or baseless complacency. That is, we have no reason to be complacent about our existences, about our societies, or about the conflicts that they are engaged in. But for the large majority of the mainstream of both Israeli and American societies, we are turned inwards, concerned essentially with our own existences and security, unwilling to engage in the larger issues that face us and even moreso that face our neighbors. Thanks to technology and legal systems and economic systems and governments that enable us, invite us, all but command us to stay within our individual orbits, we feel no need to engage with or understand those around us.
In the United States, this is not hard to discern. Consider how often people really engage with the near-existential issues that our society faces. How often do people move beyond listening to or reading a news story (if they even get that far) about Iraq to attempt to engage with any of the possible solutions? How often do people move beyond the loud fracases on either side of the immigration debate to understand the real, individual lives that are at stake? Or the “what do we do about terrorism” debates? How many times do people move beyond basic assumptions about poverty to comprehend the existence of those who remain poor in our affluent country? How often do we remove ourselves from the center of our lives?
And, lest I be considered too preachy, let me be the first to put myself in the “just about never” categories of the above questions. Family, work, kids, friends, hobbies, house maintenance, etc. It’s all too much sometimes. The problems of the world are out there somewhere, away from me and my family. And, for better or for worse, given the options, I essentially prefer it that way.
Like me, I believe most Americans do not avoid the problems of our day out of hatred or spite. We do so out of fatigue, out of scheduling concerns, and, ultimately, out of complacency. We believe that these problems need to be solved somehow, by someone. But that we just don’t have the time to engage in solving them, and in the end, because the problems are just “out there,” they won’t come to our door any time soon. So we can let someone else worry about it because, well, my house needs to be cleaned, I have some work to, my kids need to go to the park, and we haven’t had a babysitter in over a month. It may not be true that I can let someone else deal with the bigger problems we face, that may be baseless, but unless something forces me to, will I do so myself?
Then my family came to Israel for 3 months, and my complacency became so apparent when reflected in what I have experienced here. What has been remarkable to me about this summer in Israel is the complacency that “security” has brought. Like in the U.S., there is so much to be non-complacent about here, even leaving aside the Palestinian conflict.
Consider this. At present, on the grounds of the Knesset and Supreme Court in the past week, you can find a tent protest (and signs around town) from some the settlers disengaged from Gaza in 2005, a similar protest by Bedouin complaining of home demolitions and a variety of conditions, and some of the refugees from Darfur who have been alternately jailed, released with unclear conditions, or sent back to Egypt.
(If you have not been following this last story of the Darfur refugees in Israel, you should be – the notion of Israel imprisoning or turning away refugees from a genocide is something hard to fathom.)
Those are just the problems that have risen to such degrees that people have organized around them to this level. The list of societal issues certainly goes on and on.
Then consider the Palestinians. In 1997 and 1998, when last I spent significant time here, the conflict was on people’s minds in Jerusalem and throughout Israel all of the time. Obviously, the primary concern of Israelis even then was terror, and an overarching sense of fear and dread about the next suicide bombing. But the immediacy of that violence also led to, I would argue, a greater awareness and understanding of what was happening in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps it was only because people wanted to know why the security measures weren’t working, but ultimately they wanted to know what was happening over there because it impacted what was happening over here so directly and tragically.
Now, fewer Israelis are engaged because they simply don’t feel like they need to know or care anymore. At least, as with Americans and Iraq and Afghanistan, not more than keeping up with the news. The long-term impact of the occupation – settlement construction, road construction, the Separation Wall, military activity, near-total separation of Israelis from Palestinians and of many Palestinians from other Palestinians — and the many failures of the Palestinian leadership and factions have come close to dividing the Palestinian people from themselves. As a result, with their division, with their decreased impact on Israeli society, Israelis enjoy the simple luxury of being able to not think about them very much.
The construction of the Separation Wall is a perfect example. When you live in Jerusalem, it is all around you. You catch glimpses from so many spots in the center of town. But relatively few have gone to Abu Dis or any of the other neighborhoods to see it up close. So few have worried about the long-term impact of this kind of separation, have engaged to try to minimize the impact on daily life. The notion of solidarity with those impacted by the Wall or occupation as a necessity because of the understanding that they will someday impact Israeli life one way or the other is, for the most part, gone.
And it makes sense. The problems are somewhere else, the economy is humming, and, for now, for once in such a long time, they don’t need to think about the conflict all that much. I can understand that kind of reaction; after all, I have benefited from and experienced it all summer with my family.
But ultimately this is simple complacency. Because, in the end, we know the problems still exist and that the current “solutions” are merely temporary. Yet because we don’t need to deal with them now, we can hope someone else will, and pray that they will just go away altogether. And all the while, we can turn inwards and try to forget the rest.
And in those hopes may well lie the seeds of our future crises.
To help me tie this back to sinat chinam, here is a fascinating passage from a 2001 Jerusalem Post article on sinat chinam:
What they [the Jews on the Exodus who believed the spies] doubted was their own worthiness. They realized that even after entering the Land they would be dependent on G-d’s beneficence. Feeling unworthy of His love, they concluded that G-d sought to kill them at the hands of the Caananite nations.
All sinat chinam derives from similar feelings of unworthiness. Those who lack any confidence in themselves live their lives in constant comparison to others. They cast a critical eye on others so that they might feel better about themselves. The impulse to speak derogatorily of others reflects low self-esteem, which finds salve only in putting others down.
Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar Movement, once witnessed a boy pushing a playmate down in order to make himself taller. Reb Yisrael predicted that nothing would ever come of that boy. Had he tried instead to make himself taller instead by jumping up, said Reb Yisrael, there would have been hope.
Today we are all little boys pushing down our playmates.
….Sensing our own failures, we console ourselves that everybody else is doing worse. Our entire society is made up of people lacking a sense of positive achievement, who can sustain themselves only by cataloguing the failures of others.
…The Torah cure for sinat chinam is to stop judging ourselves in comparison to others. For viewing others we need a benevolent eye that accentuates the positive. The critical, judgmental eye is best reserved for ourselves.
So, too, do we remain little boys today. Perhaps we may not all be little boys pushing down our playmates. What I see is that Americans and Israelis are societies of people who do not notice that our playmates have been pushed down. We do not pick them up off the ground and help rub out their clothes, maybe see if we can find an adult to help mediate.
We do not understand that our complacency, our contentment to turn away and play with our own things, enables the pushers to continue their pushing. Eventually, though, those who seek to push others down will get around to all of us who remain complacent. One way or the other, unless we work together, unless we decide that it’s time to engage, to act, to fix, then they will eventually push everyone down. And we will have another tragedy to add to the list on Tisha B’Av.
As we saw, the cure for baseless hatred is baseless love. So I believe the cure for baseless complacency must be baseless engagement. Not just engaging when it’s in your interest to do so, or when it involves an issue you happen to be connected to. But engaging on whatever possible, whenever possible. Even in very small ways. Anything to let those who would seek to push our societies down know that people do care, that we understand what they’re doing.
We must let them know that, although we will not simply fight them back with their methods and just try to push them down before they get to us, we will move beyond our complacency and work with those who have been pushed.
If we don’t, if we remain complacent, then we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
