Shortly before we arrived in Israel last week, I had the chance to speak with one of the organizers of the DC “Israel at 60” celebration to be held next year. In the course of our discussion, he explained that, because of how disconnected so much of the Jewish audience is from Israel, the operating approach of the organizers for the content of the events was going to be at a level of asking American Jews to “go on a first date” with Israel. As a result, the specific program I had in mind related to the occupation was not going to work because, well, you don’t talk about such things on a first date.
A lot went through my mind when I heard that, but I held my tongue. And I’m glad I did, as I have thought a lot about this statement, this dating service approach, in the intervening weeks and think it sheds a lot of insight on the current state of American Jewish thinking, both in the mainstream and on the left, about Israel. In both good and bad ways, but primarily in ways that could actually help us all move forward.
And for me, now that I have returned to Israel for the first time in nearly 9 years, with 2 small kids this time, it means even more personally.
First, my initial response to the notion that the “Israel at 60” events should be conceived as having American Jews go on a “first date with Israel.” In short, a first date with Israel is like a first date with Pam Anderson. Okay, maybe that’s a tad unfair; let’s say Courtney Love (remember her, Kurt Cobain’s widow and singer for the band Hole?) Someone who had tragedy thrust upon her, who has made plenty of her own mistakes and who appears to have myriad ongoing issues, and about whom there is so much is out there already.
So when you’re on a first date with Courtney Love, do you really need an ice-breaker? There may be a lot to learn about the real person, but even in the first date, you’d probably end up dealing with some of the tough issues, rather than just pretending they don’t exist at all, right?
So, too, with Israel. Just as you wouldn’t ask Courtney Love on your first date, “so, just curious — have you ever tried drugs?” why bother pretending for potential American Jewish suitors that Israel has no difficult issues of her own that are of her own making?
But if you think about it, this sums up precisely the approach taken by the mainstream Jewish organizations to Israel overall. That is, poll after poll, year after year, shows that the American Jewish community is less and less connected to Israel. We come to Israel less, we know less about it, we have mixed views on its future, whether politically, sociologically, economically, even religiously. This is none too surprising given the overall, relatively prosperous state of the community in America. We’re doing pretty well in the USA, and well, Israel is complicated. So who needs a relationship?
Aha – it’s complicated. Conflict with the Palestinians, hot and cold conflicts with other Arab neighbors, discrimination against Israeli Arabs and other minorities, a complex relationship with the US (no, it’s not as simple as anyone tries to portray), huge tensions among the Jewish groups in Israel, issues between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, hyper-capitalism vs. socialist roots, and on and on and on. Not one of these is simple, let alone trying to understand all of them in even a first year of dating.
And, whether the organizations will admit it or not, most American Jews at least know that it’s complicated. They may know very little to nothing of the reality (other than the shades they may have picked up in Hebrew school) as Jews, but they certainly have plenty of access to media of all stripes that, if nothing else, lets them know that this is a complicated place, filled with complicated people. Sticking with the metaphor, no one is coming to the first date asking whether Israel has a past that could cause commitment issues; they know as much already.
But they may not know much more; just enough to know they don’t know very much. So when they turn to AJCommittee or Hillel or Federation or “Israel at 60” for insight and are instead told just “Support Israel” or “Go on a First Date with Israel” and shown pictures of falafel, a kibbutz orchard, the Western Wall, and the glitter of Dizengoff St. in Tel Aviv (and maybe a Bedouin man thrown in for diversity), they shake their heads. Little will be said about the Palestinians or any of the other conflicts, other than some basic “facts” about Israel’s rights, followed by claims that other perspectives they may have heard lack “balance” or “context.”
And although these “first date” approaches for the disconnected American Jews have continued to fail – i.e. the polls get worse and worse each year — the M.O. continues to hold within the mainstream community organizations. And so the disconnected who might be interested in another date, maybe even two more, were they spoken to in a mature way about the reality in Israel simply turn off all the way. No one has time for people who won’t admit to their own issues, especially when they’re obvious ones. So the dating pool gets smaller and smaller.
As I see it, the organizations have been trying to be a dating service between Israel and American Jews for so long, they have no idea how to provide relationship counseling when things go south, let alone can’t even get started.
Now, in the past, my post would have stopped here, perhaps with a concluding paragraph or two about how what’s needed is for the community to let us get beyond the first date, to grow up and live a little together, to let American Jews see and understand the not-so-nice parts of Israel because that’s precisely where the love for the place comes in (at least it did for me, and has for so many people I have encountered and whose writing I have read). It is inherently Jewish to want to get beyond that first date, to start a relationship, to start trying to fix the other person – but, in this case, we rarely get the chance.
But this post will go on a bit into my current feelings. And these were somewhat inspired by Steffi’s recent post in response to her Israel Bonds dinner invitation. Eloquent and powerful and incisive and accurate as her post was, it left me feeling a little empty. And since coming here last week, I realize why.
Those of us in the Jewish community who criticize the mainstream, who work in one way or another to try to solve some of Israel’s problems – and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do – well, we focus mostly on those problems. Way beyond first dates, we act like jilted lovers, or maybe more precisely, a couple who has forgotten why they fell in love and instead spend most of their time thinking about how every aspect of the other person makes them cringe.
I did this the last two times I was here and have done so consistently over the last 9 years – given the complexities and the moral challenges and the human lives at stake on all sides of this, it’s hard to think about anything else sometimes. And, as I wrote about during the Gaza disengagement, for me, it’s often to the point that when I overhear people talking about Israel or when I see someone whose car or clothing bears an Israeli flag or an IDF insignia, I immediately jump to numerous conclusions about their beliefs, identities, etc. Maybe something others do when they see a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker.
That is, we on the left are often as single-minded in criticism as the other side tries to be in support. Whereas they refuse to admit to Israeli flaws other than relatively minor ones, we generally refuse to see anything but. Maybe not to ourselves, or in our own discussions, but to the world — to the disconnected we want so desparately to hear us — this is who we are.
In the contexts of many different difficult political or social issues, this black/white dichotomy is typical and uninteresting. But in this case, where there is such a large and important group of silent and disconnected potential daters, our focus on the difficult is as unappealing as the mainstream obsession with the simplistic. Maybe moreso.
So here I am – in Israel not for human rights or civil rights work, but, ultimately, to take care of my children while my wife is on a work assignment here. Figuring out where the good playgrounds are, what restaurants to go to, how to ask in Hebrew for the things that my older son wants that were never in my college Hebrew vocab lessons. And rather than some level of discomfort or guilt, I am feeling strangely good to be here – realizing that Israel can – already does — mean something good. That the revulsion I feel at seeing the separation wall as I drive around can actually be mitigated (at least for me; certainly not for the Palestinians impacted by it in such a horrific way) by, say, the experience of Shabbat here. That there is something overpowering and special in the Jewish people having a home – at least part of a home — here.
Who knows, maybe you have to be 2 years old to really enjoy Israel any more?
Perhaps I will sound like a sell-out to those in the anti-occupation movement, and probably worse to Palestinians. That I am now just another Jew accepting ignorance of Israeli occupation policies as as a way of being. I don’t think that’s the case, and know this really won’t change my approach or my activism overall, but even if no one believes that, I guess I think that’s okay; maybe all of us on the left need this once in awhile. Maybe in the end, the people who need to go on a first date with Israel are not the currently disconnected, those who have no reason to go out with Israel again, but rather those of us who have lost our way in love because of all of the pain involved.
What’s always so frustrating to American Jewish anti-occupation activists is that the mainstream demeans and diminishes our Judaism, our connection to Jewish tradition and to Israel. Perhaps we do that to ourselves, though, by not focusing on anything but the problems. Not because we should ignore the problems, but precisely because the solutions we seek will ultimately have to come from within a loving relationship, not from without. We shouldn’t forget the pain or the tears; we just need to remember — and to work to show others that we know — that there is more.
When we forget that, when we forget our connections, we lose not only our ultimate strength in trying to work for change, but we lose any chance at connecting to the disconnected. And believe me, we need the disconnected to go on a first date with us more than the mainstream does. Yet the way we’re going, we will never succeed.
So, at least for a little while longer, I am going to keep up my first date (as I approach the 15th anniversary of my first trip here) and try to regain the feeling of why it is that I care so much about what happens here, about what my people do here, about why I think I (or my wife or my sons) can, indeed must, have at least a tiny part in fixing it.
I just hope the mainstream and the disconnected will do the same and make their own first dates mean something more. So they too will love this place, these people, and ultimately be willing to listen to what we think needs to be done to really make the relationship work.
Your point is well taken, Brad. I can’t speak for others who are anti-occupation activists, but for myself, I am clear IN MY OWN MIND that I care about this because I care about Israel, deeply. One morning as I sat reading the English on-line version of Haaretz and groaning at whatever the bad news was that day, my husband laughingly asked me why on earth I insist on starting each day working myself into a depression with Haaretz over my breakfast coffee. Why do I read your posts, the other blogs, books like “The Lemon Tree” and now, Alice Rothchild’s book “Broken Promises, Broken Dreams?” Why do I bother to post on Andrew’s blog? At times I’ve complained that being Jewish is more than a full time career! If I didn’t care about Israel I’d probably start my mornings with the comic strips in our local paper, followed by “Dear Abby”. BUT — and here is where I think your point is so important — is our basic commitment to Israel something which gets lost in the criticism of its policies vis-a-vis the occupation, the Israeli Arabs, etc.? In my response to one of the comments on my RSVP post, I questioned the commenter’s use of the term “self-hating,” noting that it’s a strange way to characterize someone who is critical of Israel. So perhaps those of us who do care about Israel need to find ways of making that evident — ways that emphasize, and do not diminish, the validity of our criticisms.
Of course, I am also well aware that there are some Jews in the anti-occupation movement — people I respect and admire — who do NOT love Israel, and who are motivated to act out of a more universalist grounding in human rights. That is their choice. But for those of us who act out of our connection to Israel, it probably is crucial that we express it, find ways of renewing it, and remind ourselves of just why it is we’re so pained about what is happening there now.
What we see and hear is always more powerful than an abstract. This is especially true for the Holy Land.
There is clear evidence that Americans who visit Israel on personal trips or through programs like Birthright Israel form strong bonds to the country.
For most Jews, that’s where it stops. They visit, they bond, many remain connected and become financial and political supporters of Israel.
Visiting the occupied territories (as you both know) is also a powerful experience. Almost no American Jews make that pilgrimage. Almost no Israelis make it, unless they serve in the West Bank.
If they did, they would be shocked at the oppressive conditions we impose on the Palestinians, the impact of the separation wall, the sense of loss and despair that permeate Palestinian life.
We don’t need to accept the proposition that those who criticize Israel hate Israel.
Perhaps, if more Jews visited Israel and toured the West Bank, there would be more of us who care deeply about Israel, as you do; and who join the anti-occupation movement, as you have.
Appreciate both of your thoughts very much.
Andrew’s point about people not going to the territories (at this point, better to say West Bank; Gaza is now sadly not really even in such a conversation) leads precisely into Steffi’s, I think. That is, once you’re there, once you experience, you generally can’t turn your back on it again. Perhaps we feel we don’t do enough, or don’t know what to do precisely, but once you have those moments of understanding of what is at stake for Israel, for Palestine, for so many people, it’s hard to let go.
It’s been eerie in this first week (and I plan to write about this soon) how easy it is to be so insulated here. From what goes on elsewhere in Israel (I was sure I would have overheard more talk of the situation in Sderot by now, for example), let alone in Palestine.
It could never be said in reality, of course, but perhaps the right answer to the self-hating barb when lodged at critics of Israel whose beliefs are rooted in their Judaism is “yes.” (And, Steffi, thanks for your point on the fact that not everyone comes to this from their Judaism — I get somewhat myopic sometimes).
As in “Yes, I hate what Israel is doing in Palestine and even to itself with the Occupation.” And “Yes, I hate it so much that I have to speak and act out about it.” And “Yes, even though Israel is ultimately a part of me in a real way as a Jew, I have to speak out about what I hate about that part of me, no matter how painful.”
Even though the word “hate” gets used more in those sentences, the issue here is that we should focus more on the “self” rather than the “hating” part of that phrase. For people who have taken the harder road to understand a part of who their self is, how can there be any other course than to hate this reality?
I am eager to hear your take on how easy it is to be insulated from what’s going on. My husband and I were in Israel in early November; the purpose of our visit was specifically to spend time with our rather large network of cousins there. I kept referring to it as “the kitchen table tour of Israel” because we quite literally went from one kitchen table to another, catching up on everyone’s lives, getting to know our cousins’ children, and of course being fed. So I kind of expected that we’d be somewhat insulated. But even then, I was quite taken aback by how very easy it is to live one’s life there and have not a clue as to what is happening 15, 20 minutes away! We drove on a major artery around Tel Aviv which I knew to be less than a 10 minute drive from the village of Bidya in the occupied territories, which I’d visited when I made the West Bank trip. Bidya might as well have been in Alaska. The Palestinians are simply invisible.
So I’m very interested to hear if your experience is similar, since you will be there for much longer (our visit was only one week), and I assume you’ll be getting to places other than relatives’ or friends’ kitchen tables!
Hi
The conflict for Jewish people about Israel is not just about whether to love Israel or not to love Israel because of what it is doing in the occupied territories.
For me the conflict is about my love for Judaism v. my feelings about Israel. My concern is that the love for Israel and the values it seems to symbolize has for many become the definition of Judaism. This, I believe, has been a major contributing factor over the last 60 years in the significant decline in the number of those in the United States who once considered themselves Jewish but whose values (social justice, compassion, etc.) are not consistent with those they attribute to the government of Israel; i.e., Judaism(??!!).
The decline was accompanied by the failure of Jewish institutions, certainly locally, during this time period to focus on the personal issues that concerned those growing up Jewish in the 50’s to the 90’s; i.e., Vietnam, alcoholism, drugs, abuse, sexism, aging, materialism, careers, etc.
Now we have the establishment’s obsession with “continuity” and its misdirected emphasis on a solution that involves more trips to Israel.
For more go to “A Perspective on Continuity”
http://www.centerforjewishalternatives.com/articles/continuity.htm
I am not sure if what I have just written on my Blog about Shavuot and Ruth has anything to do with First Date except perhaps about the invisibility of the Moabites but I thought you might want to read one or all of my series on Olive Trees and Olive Harvesting.
The title of Part 1 is
“Take Your Olive Branch and Shove It.”
http://judaismandisrael.blogspot.com/2007/05/take-your-olive-branch-and-shove-it.html
The title of Part 6 is
“Take Your Olive Branch and Shavuot!”
http://judaismandisrael.blogspot.com/2007/05/take-your-olive-branch-and-shavuot-part_22.html
Ron
Hi
Following up on my previous about the possible precondition of, or the conflict between, love of Judaism and love of Israel, I read just read this on JSchool. As I mentioned to Andrew and, perhaps, Steffi, in 1971 my family and six others including the Gendlers, formed one of the first Havurah with children (which continued for 15 years). My sense is that the temples and synagogues became more and more irrelevant while focusing their attention primarily on acts of anti-semitism and “We Stand With Israel” programs. I think that there is a correlation between being an ex-pat from any Jewish movement or institution and being unwilling to even participate in a Seven-Minute Date with Israel.
“Rabbi Ellen Dreyfus, of B’nai Yehuda Beth Sholom in Homewood (Illinois), was installed as vice president of the Central conference of American Rabbis, the national organization of Reform rabbis, believed to be the oldest and largest rabbinic association in the world….. In the case of young people “I see a growing post-denominationalism” in a younger generation, she says. How are we going to reach out as a movement to young people who have no interest in movements? That’s another challenge.”
One answer, she says, may lie in the chavurah (informal fellowship group) movement her eldest son, among many others, identifies with. “His cohorts are less interested in institutional synagogues as they are in studying, celebrating, creating community. At this point we don’t know what will happen to them when they settle down and have children, but we don’t want to lose the best and the brightest because we have become irrelevant,” she says.
This message contrasts sharply with URJ president Rabbi Eric Yoffie’s statements railing against “postdenominationalism”. Rabbi Dreyfus’s message is one that I (and other Reform movement expats) have been waiting for years to hear from the official institutions of the Reform movement: a recognition that we have created meaningful Jewish lives outside the Reform institutions without abandoning our progressive Jewish values (i.e. the reason we’re not there isn’t because we’re not interested in Judaism), and an acknowledgement that we are missed and that our absence highlights an area where the movement falls short. Acknowledging the problem is the first step towards solving it, so the message we’re hearing from the new leadership portends good things for the future.”