Balagan: Israeli Government v. American Jews
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Aauuugghhh.
First, I click on a link to Arutz Sheva to check out their minute-by-minute coverage of the Jerusalem Conference, only to see a picture of PM Olmert holding an umbrella over Abbas like he's some sort of man servant to the palestinian chairman. Then, I read Arlene Kushner's report from the Conference via Israpundit:
"We have to write down the principle of two states," [Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni] told us. Israel as a homeland for Jews, and Palestine as a homeland for Palestinians. If we don’t write this now and establish the principle, we might not have another chance. For we are facing people who want us gone.And these are the people governing our nation. Incredible.
Got it? She is so afraid of forces that would destroy us, that she's willing to accept what may be less than we are entitled to, just for the opportunity to get it in writing that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. And she believes that if we are to do it, it must be "today," because another chance might not come.
Meanwhile, American Jewry continues to go through its own identity crisis of sorts. Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League told the Knesset today that One-third of Americans believe that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States according to the latest research. "'This belief is so out of sync with everything else happening in America, with the fact that there's so much acceptance of Jews in all phases of life - academia, commerce, media, politics,' Foxman told The Jerusalem Post." Take a survey of the opinions expressed by the "accepted" Jewish Americans in academia, commerice, media, and politics, and I guarantee that you'll find the majority are left-wing in their views regarding America, and prefer to keep Israel out of the discussion completely. (Been there, done that, got the college ring and degree in television & film to prove it.) Foxman blames the poll results on the popularity of Walt & Mearsheimer's hack piece, "The Israel Lobby" and Jimmy "Peanuts" Carter's latest pro-pally tome. "MK Colette Avital (Labor)...told the Post that the figures indicated 'a failure to explain - I hate to use the word hasbara - that you can be loyal to both. In the US, people can live with several identities, such as Italian-Americans and African-Americans, and Jewish Americans should be seen in that context.'" How can you take on a hyphenated identity that is a total oxymoron? Can you honestly see anyone who truly identifies themself as a Jewish person identifying with a country that wants to divide Jerusalem and elect a guy named Hussein into the Presidency?
In a companion article in the JPost, Haviv Rettig writes, "Malcolm Hoenlein [Executive Vice Chairman, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations] has been telling everyone who will listen that something dangerous is happening among the American elite. A short version of his view holds that pro-Israel positions among American Jews are being delegitimized by being defined as "anti-American." ...Is support for what they see as the "Jewish interest" - supporting a safe haven outside America for their brethren worldwide - somehow against the interests of America?"
That question is easily answered in one word: No. However, the question is far more interesting in light of the fact that it illustrates the classic conundrum of "Jewish-American" identity: If 'Jews from around the world' need a safe-haven, and America is so great that the Jews here never plan to leave, why shouldn't the world's Jews seek their safe haven in America? If America is so safe, why should we bother supporting Israel?
Anyone with half a brain cell could take one wink at America today and comprehend that the question above is ironically rhetorical. Yet, for many loyal, patriotic American Jews, the duality of supporting a safe-haven for international Jews while maintaining squatter's rights on your own American turf has never hit home. I have heard American Jews proudly declare that Israel wouldn't exist without Jewish American money, and I have been to Seders where the older generation sings "G-d Bless America" instead of "L'Shanah Haba B'Yerushalayim" without blinking an eye. What? Is Israel for those "other Jews" whose ancestors weren't smart enough to get out when the getting was good? Why is Israel okay for the rest of the world's wandering Jews? What, just because we've managed to finally get accepted into Harvard Law, or pass a joke about being a shanda on premium cable, or scored a seat on Wall Street, we're suddenly supposed to feel "at home"? At least the most ultra-Orthodox anti-Israel protestors are willing to accept the idea that they'll return to Israel once Moshiach arrives. When will the successful American Jews head home-- when they're forced into early retirement by the kids who think that the be-all and end-all of being Jewish involves reading HEEB on Friday nights before going out to party?
The article ends with a sharp inference comparing today's anti-Israel American elite with the fascists of the 1930s, another ironic twist considering that most American elites of the 1930s were just as anti-Semitic as their modern day counterparts. Thanks to the anti-Jewishness of the 1930s, FDR's Administration of Elites (see Whittaker Chambers' Witness) put the kabosh on any anti-Nazi messages being sent out by "Jewish Hollywood" (thanks to the ripe anti-Semite Joe Kennedy, who warned Jewish studio owners that if they didn't quit inserting anti-Nazi messages into their films, the gentile population would "blame the Jews" for "getting them into the war"--see An Empire of their Own by Neal Gabler) and effectively aided and abetted Hitler in the mass murder of six million European Jews (see The Abandonment of the Jews by David S. Wyman and The War Against the Jews by Lucy Dawidowicz) by implementing a strict immigration quota in the 1930s and doing absolutely NOTHING when presented with clear and precise information regarding the activities going on in concentration camps across Europe. If that was the effect of elitist American thinking then, what of today?
I recently spoke with an Israeli who told me real estate in Israel is on the rise. Along with an increasing western European Jewish immigrant population, many American Jews are beginning to buy second homes in Israel, "just in case." I wonder how many of those Jewish Americans had parents who walked around with JNF tin tzedekah cans at Pesach and mortgaged their homes during the Six Day War. I wonder, would they be pleased or horrified at the realization that their investment was paying off a lot closer to home than they ever thought.
The Israeli government operates on fear. American Jews operate on confusion. I am a Jew born in America who believes fervently in a whole and united Israel with a whole and united capitol of Jerusalem, even if that means calling negotiations a joke and fighting for it. And, perhaps, in all the logical sense of my commentary I am the greatest engima of all.
Labels: identity, Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish, Jewish American
posted by Shoshana @ 7:09 PM
Israeli Music is Amazing
Monday, February 11, 2008
I picked up 15 new Israeli CDs this weekend.
Yes, fifteen. Hey, I get to this store twice a year at best-- I have to stock up.
Among the albums, I bought Sarit Hadad's "Ashlayot Metukot" ("Sweet Illusions"):
The album contains one of the most powerful songs I've ever heard. Titled, "Shma Elohai (Kshe'Halev Bocheh)" it was written after the "brutal lynching and mutilation" of two IDF reservists, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami in October of 2000. If you don't recall the incident, perhaps the infamous picture will shake your memory bank:
The palestinian terrorist holds up hands covered in Israeli blood, moments before the bodies of the soldiers are thrown out of the window for the crowd below to pummel and destroy.
Here are the lyrics in English, translation via HebrewSongs.com:
SHMA ELOHAI (KSHE'HALEV BOCHEH)The store owner, who is Israeli, always plays the CDs for me before I buy them. "Listen before you buy! We'll play anything you like-- that way you know you like it before you buy it!" My Hebrew is rough, so I always ask her what the songs are about; inevitably, she replies, "They're all love songs, always love songs." But they're more than that. The crap you listen to on Top 40 constitutes "love songs" to most Americans. Israeli musicians may sing a lot about love, but it isn't always romantic and fun-- sometimes it is hard and painful, like the love lost through senseless murder, and love sought from enemies out of the desire to live in peace.
HEAR MY GOD (WHEN THE HEART CRIES)
When the heart cries
only God hears
The pain rises out of the soul
A man falls down before he sinks down
With a little prayer (he) cuts the silence
Shma (Hear) Israel my God,
you're the omnipotent
You gave me my life,
you gave me everything
In my eyes a tear,
the heart cries quietly
And when the heart is quiet,
the soul screams
Shma (Hear) Israel my God,
now I am alone
Make me strong my God;
make it that I won't be afraid
The pain is big,
and there's no where to run away
End it because I can't take it anymore
(make the end of it because I have no more energy left within me)
When the heart cries,
Time stands still
All of a sudden, the man sees his entire life
He doesn't want to go to the unknown
He cries to his God right before a big fall
Israeli music is powerful. The store owner was amazed at my interest in and knowledge of Israeli pop culture. "American Jewishness doesn't really have much to offer," I explained to her, "Israel is where our culture is."
"Right?! Exactly!" And then she gave me four CDs for free.
Labels: culture, Israel, Jewish American, Jewishness, Judaism, music, Sarit Hadad, Shma Elohai, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 9:45 PM
1938 all over again...
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
I am not predicting that American Jewry is immanently in danger from the imposition of the Nurenberg Laws or that the U.S. foreign policy toward Israel is destined to become overtly hostile overnight. We are, however, faced with foreboding winds of change. Let us not blind ourselves to that possible reality. In my opinion American Jewry may be living in a fool's paradise, much like the German Jews before the rise of Hitler.Dr. Irving Kett
I do urgently believe that the Government of Israel should assiduously be investing great capital on planning the future of the Jewish State without U.S. military and diplomatic support. Do I believe that is possible? I absolutely do which is why my children and grandchildren are living in Israel.
Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired
Professor of Civil Engineering
California State University, L. A.
from his essay:
HOW SECURE ARE JEWS IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD?
Baruch haShem. Kett spends a great deal of time in his introduction exploring the destructive power of Jewish self-hatred. He cites Melanie Phillips's The Jewish Enemy Within, which discusses the far-left anti-Zionist Jews, those about whom Kett writes, "To these so-called liberal Israel haters, Jewish victim-hood is the only authentic moral Jewish existence. To them the most spiritually elevated moral Jew is the dead Jew. The real crime of Israel in their eyes is that Israel represents Jewish power."
Kett also cites a book titled Jews and Power by Ruth Wisse, which discusses the ambivalence, and even dislike of power and self-governance exhibited within Jewish culture. This "moral solipsism," as Wisse terms it, has an extremely negative impact on the psyche and survival of the State of Israel, as Bret Stephens notes in his review of the book in Commentary magazine, "Even so, as this salutary book insistently warns, misgivings about the exercise of power in self-defense retain a neurotic and damaging grip on the Jewish imagination."
Kett argues that Israel must become totally and completely self-reliant, and stop nursing at its now (or, at least, soon to be) dead American pacifier. He's right. If the sudden "peace agreement" drawn up by America and France to end the War in Lebanon FOR Israel in 2006 wasn't clue enough, if Annapolis wasn't clue enough, if Bush's declarations of a "palestinian" state by the end of '08 aren't enough... Kett argues that we are in the same place Europe was in 1938. You be the judge.
Israpundit linked up to an article by Israel National Radio correspondent Yehudah HaKohen, The Zionist Revolution. He concludes with:
Instead of downplaying Zionism’s radical essence, we must employ it and direct it towards reigniting the fire that once drove Jewish teenagers to drain malaria-filled swamps, fight wars of liberation and make the desert bloom. The revolutionary spark that stirred our youth to become builders and farmers and fighters in our land can surely lead them to take up the cause of Jewish liberation in our own times. By utilizing the full scope and immeasurable beauty of the Zionist Revolution, we can educate our children to see themselves as participants in the great historic drama unfolding in our days.To me, "the full scope and immeasurable beauty of the Zionist Revolution" is found in Ezekiel 36:24-27
For I will take you from among the nations,And Ezekiel 37:11-14
gather you from all the countries,
and return you to your own soil.
Then, I will sprinkle clean water on you,
and you will be clean;
I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness
and from all your idols.
I will give you a new heart
and put a new spirit inside you;
I will take the stony heart out of your flesh
and give you a heart of flesh.
I will put my Spirit inside you
and cause you to live by my laws,
respect my rulings and obey them.
Then he said to me, "Human being! These bones are the whole House of Israel; and they are saying, 'Our bones have dried up, our hope is gone, and we are completely cut off.' Therefore prophesy; say to them that Adonai Elohim says, 'My people! I will open your graves and make you get up out of your graves, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am Adonai-- when I have opened your graves and make you get up out of your graves, my people! I will put my Spirit in you; and you will be alive. Then I will place you in your own land; and you will know that I, Adonai, have spoken and that I have done it,' says Adonai."Back in the 1880s, young Jews from Europe and Russia travelled to Zion to clean out swamps because they had to-- they were being persecuted in pogroms and simply had nowhere else to go. Now, however, the majority of the diaspora population is in America, and as Kett testifies to in his article, American Jews have, by and large, convinced themselves that America is their own promised land. We are not being beaten on the streets; American synagogues are not being burned down like the ones in France. In short, life is good, and because life is good, most Jewish Americans don't see the need for G-d, let alone Israel in their lives. Most American Jews do not even attend synagogue, and if they do, the majority do so for social reasons. Jewish America has buried itself in a spiritual grave.
No, for Zionism to succeed, it must be motivated by more than desperation. It must be motivated by passion-- a passion for and from HaShem. And this spiritual awakening has already been written about! Many correlate the prophesy of the Dry Bones with the horrors of the Shoah--and I don't doubt this to be true. But, I also acknowledge that history is cyclical. If we are, indeed, in the 21st century's own '1938' I pray that, this time, we heed the prophesy of our G-d before yet another six million of us perish.
I dislike people who grandstand before audiences and tell them what to pray for and how to pray for it. I am not the writer of a Siddur. But, I do know that now is the time for us to turn to our G-d and cry out to Him in prayer for the things we lack as a nation: strength; courage; passion; conviction. A nurse once told me that there are 613 bones, muscles, and ligaments within the human body--exactly the number of the mitzvot in Torah. Torah, the document that guarantees forever our tenancy in the land of Israel, is what we need to live by. But, as the prophesy says, to do so we must cry out for the Spirit of G-d, the Ruach haKodesh, to cancel out all of that fear and self-hatred that plague us as Jews.
Zionism began with Torah: Israel began with HaShem. Just as the prophet writes, to live in Zion, we need Torah, and to live Torah, we need HaShem.
Bevakasha, HaShem, hear our cry...
Labels: aliyah, Diaspora, Israel, Jewish, Jewish American, Jewry, Judaism, Messianic Judaism, Torah, United States, Zionism
posted by Shoshana @ 7:04 PM
