Us and Them
Friday June 17, 2022 – י״ח סִיוָן
During my freshman year of college, I enrolled in a Hebrew literature course dedicated to the literary works of A. B. Yehoshua. After spending time with his landmark novels Mr. Mani and The Lover, essays on the “Normality” of the Jewish condition, and the short story “Facing the Forests,” Yehoshua spent time with us on a visit and shared his political outlook conveyed through his characters. As a novelist, Yehoshua transgressed taboos and crossed the redlines of his time through fictional relationships and scenes that became part and parcel of the changing Israeli societal tapestry. One of the first Israeli writers that I got to know and appreciate, I loved the journeys on which he took me, and how Israeli I felt through a familiarity with the fruit of his pen that sat at the center of the modern Israeli canon.
A decade after that formative freshman seminar, A.B. Yehoshua sat on – a now-infamous – AJC panel and blathered on about American Jewish identity vs. Israeli Jewish identity. “Judaism for me [as an Israeli] is my skin, while for you [as a Diaspora Jew] it is a jacket that can be taken on and off.” He blew up the panel causing a huge reverberation around the Jewish world with his Diaspora-negating radical Zionism left over from yesteryear. The Haaretz newspaper dedicated the entirety of its op-ed pages for three Fridays in a row inviting a smorgasbord of Jewish personalities to weigh in in response to this disturbing disruption. American Jews certainly did not like being told that they are “partial” Jews and that even Arab Israelis have a stronger Jewish identity than they do because they speak a Jewish language and live in Jewish time. He did not back down and adamantly insisted that Israel is the only place in the world in which one can live a Jewish life that is “total” – in which, there is no compartmentalization between the inner and the outer, between what is Jewish and what is not. It is the only place in the world in which Jews are totally responsible for the society they live in, for the environment that surrounds them, and for the government that rules them. It is the only place in the world where Jewish culture is not a subculture in a greater culture but is rather that greater culture itself.
Politeness was not A.B. Yehoshua’s forte. This week we mourn the loss of this giant. As fate would have it, on the day on which Yehoshua breathed his final breath, the leadership of the URJ sat in Israel’s Knesset with a number of MKs and Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, hosted by the Knesset’s first Reform rabbi MK Gilad Kariv. Their message could not have been more different. We sat together and listened to Min. Nachman Shai, in a gruff Israeli style, lament the lack of Diaspora exposure in Israel’s education system, and how Israelis have much to learn from the Diaspora experience. We heard in beautiful poetic language from MK Ruth Wasserman-Lande (Blue and White) that her Jewish identity was developed in South Africa and was the key formative experience influencing her Israeli identity.
We announced the largest and most expansive partnership between the Israeli government and the Reform Movement with the goal of developing leadership and learning from each other’s shared experiences.
Wait, what?
Israel should learn from the Diaspora experience!? Israelis acknowledging that there might be something useful and powerful from their cousins in the Diaspora!? Could it be that with the passing of A.B. Yehoshua, we also see the sunsetting of the disdain and scorn that Israelis have for Diaspora Jewry?
As we mourn the loss of one of Israel’s and the Jewish world’s greatest story-tellers, we are also in a moment of political crisis in which the experiment of a broad sweeping coalition – with seemingly little in common beyond the fear of a Bibi/Haredi/ultra-Nationalist monster takeover – is teetering like a fragile Jenga tower that cannot survive pulling out one more piece.
But maybe Yehoshua had it wrong? Perhaps this tension-filled political gear-grinding moment is not about “Us” Diaspora Jews vs. “Them” Israeli Jews at all. No, this moment is about a different “Us” and “Them”. Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli, head of Israel’s Labor party, shared with us this week that “the Labor Party is absolutely committed to the Kotel accord and will not allow it to be turned into a political football. To achieve it, along with civil and non-Rabbinate marriage and equality in other spheres of life, we must invest in building our political power. If we want to advance a progressive government in Israel, if we want the Israel that we promised ourselves in the Declaration of Independence, then we have to make it happen. You are our indispensable partners in this.”
Rabbi Shaul Judelman of Roots/Shorashim/Judur, eloquently explained to us, that conflicts are not about “Israelis” and “Palestinians” but rather about shattering the assumptions of “Us” versus “Them”.
Today’s moment is about a different “Us” vs. a different “them”.
Geographical lines are increasingly irrelevant as the breakdown of this fragile puzzle will depend on whether the Jewish world embraces or rejects a myopic and uncompromising brand of jingoistic and harsh nationalism, that seeks to fan the flames of intolerance and suppression of the Other, or a vision of a world in which we recognize the simple and fundamental principle that every human being is entitled to the same rights, access, and dignity.
This. Is. Not. New.
Whether we call it “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” or “Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” doesn’t matter. The political hawks like PM Naftali Bennett, Ministers Gideon Saar, Yoaz Hendel, Zeev Elkin, and even Avigdor Lieberman – who left the Right-wing bloc to join the current coalition understand that pragmatism is preferable to oppression and racism.
And the hero of the day turns out to be a devout Muslim politician named Mansour Abbas who preaches a Torah of fairness, justice, and equality for society at large, that will lead to fairness, justice, and equality for each of our communities.
Spending this week in the different States known as Israel, Palestine, the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, I come away with a sense that those of “Us” in the world who believe in the need to protect human dignity and liberty, and that a Jewish State should do the utmost to preserve life, body, and dignity, as stated in Israel’s 1992 Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty, are in an existential battle with “them” who believe that self-preservation can come at the expense of other human beings.
Seeing the issues up close this week reminds us that if we don’t forge strong partnerships and work to build our power base, the report of the Biblical 10 scouts will come to fruition and this will be a land that devours its inhabitants. So let us be like Caleb and Joshua and imagine that by working together we can make the land of Israel a Land that flows with milk and honey for all its inhabitants.
Shabbat Shalom.