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Daniel Gordis © Daniel Gordis is Director of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows, and the author, most recently, of If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State (Crown). His website is www.danielgordis.org, and his email is
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By Daniel Gordis
January 3, 2005
Some days, you wake up in this country, go to the computer and check the web, and the only conclusion that you can draw is that the Jewish people is simply losing its mind.
That the people that gave the world the Babylonian Talmud, a twenty volume conversation, in which legal and moral topics are explored to profound depth, is no longer capable of nuance, compromise or subtlety. That the scholars who were the redactors of the Talmud, who were intent on preserving opposing opinions all on the same page, would have been bewildered by the Jewish world they'd confront today. Just when things have quieted down dramatically on the military front, and there seemed a chance that for once the morning news might be somewhat brighter, it's hard not to draw the conclusion that we've come completely unglued.
A few days ago, on the last day of 2004, I clicked on YNet, one of Israel's chief internet news sites. The news coming from Asia was worse every day. One shuddered to wonder how high the death toll might go, or how rapidly disease would spread. The reaction of the world, and the relief effort, was very slow. So it wasn't too much, I thought, to hope that the morning's news would finally have stories of massive airlifts, of food and water finally reaching the survivors. There was some of that, to be sure, but in an apparent effort to make sure that one of the last headlines of 2004 was a memorable one, Yedi'ot Achronot (the Israeli daily paper that runs YNet) treated us to a rabbinic insight on the tsunami.
Rabbi Shlomo Amar, one of Israel's Chief Rabbis, shared with us, the fortunate members of his flock (though as he's the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, I guess we're not technically full members of that flock) his profound insights about the horrific events. Why did this happen? Very simple, you'll be relieved to know. God is angry. The non-Jews of the world are obligated to fulfill the seven Noahide commandments (which include prohibitions on things like idolatry, blasphemy, theft, a variety of sexual indiscretions, eating the flesh of a live animal, and a few others). Well, seems they haven't lived up to that, so they had to be punished.
Now, I realize that some people will not believe that he could have actually said something like that at a time like this, so the headline from YNet is available for your viewing pleasure. Fortunately, for Rabbi Amar at least, there's no law in Israel that Chief Rabbis have to have terribly sophisticated theologies. But it IS embarrassing, no question about that. Human loss, misery and suffering on a scale that we struggle to comprehend, and one of our Chief Rabbis decides that the most appropriate thing to do is to blame the victims. I was tempted to click "refresh" on my computer, thinking that perhaps something was wrong with my monitor. But I didn't bother. Sadly, it wasn't that hard to believe that he'd actually said that. The only good news in the whole brief episode was that the office of the Chief Rabbinate (both Ashkenazi and Sephardic, to be fair) was already held in such low esteem by the vast majority of Israelis that no real damage was done.
But lest we think that it's only in Israel, or in the Office of the Chief Rabbinate, that the Jewish people has begun to be just a tad less nuanced than we used to, rest assured. We're losing our minds across the world.
I was in a not-to-be-named city in Western Europe within the last few months, and during my stay, had occasion to meet with the faculty of a well known liberal academic institution of higher Jewish learning. The topic they'd wanted to discuss, they told me in advance, was how to work with their students to foster an ongoing commitment to Israel, even when many of them (both faculty and students) find many of Israel's actions reprehensible. Fair enough, I thought. I may not share their assessment of Israel's behavior (I don't, for the most part), but they have every right to disagree, and the question of how to justify ongoing commitment even in the face of disagreement seemed worth talking about, if that's what they wanted.
So I figured I'd meet them where they were. I began the session with a brief history of the last four years, and my own assessment that in all, Israel has conducted this war reasonably morally (the subject of the last "dispatch" I sent out). But then I acknowledged a few of the mistakes that we've made. No point itemizing them here. We all know about them. And they're painful. I figured that by mentioning them, and by agreeing with the as yet unspoken view of those in attendance that these were morally troubling incidents, I could engender a better conversation.
But I didn't get very far, before one of the members of the faculty interrupted me, very politely, and suggested, "Well, since having power inevitably means that Israel is going to abuse it, maybe the Jews would simply be better off without a State. Maybe Judaism would be a better tradition, a more moral tradition, without Israel."
At first, I wasn't sure if he was serious, or not. But he was. Very serious. And to be truthful, I wasn't entirely sure where to cut into that argument. The best I could manage, at first blush, was something like, "Well, we tried the powerlessness approach on this continent about sixty years ago, and it didn't work very well, did it?" Fortunately, most of the people in the group weren't quite as sanguine about the idea that the Jews should just call it quits in the nationalism market, and a decent conversation ensued. But this person's question kept ringing in my ears. A faculty person at a very respected institution of Jewish learning. A very bright guy, as became clear from the discussion. And completely serious that maybe we'd just be better off without a State.
A couple of weeks later, I happened to be in the States. On a Shabbat between weeks of meetings, I visited with some people in an Orthodox congregation in the greater metropolitan New York area. Lovely people. Incredibly warm hospitality. And a community in which no one would dream of asking whether Judaism would be better off without Israel. But turbulence, nonetheless.
Often, the most interesting conversations in shul are the ones in the lobby after services are over, or around the tables during Kiddush. And what was the hotly debated topic which was commanding much attention in this community? "Let's say," these people were asking, "that Heaven forbid, Sharon proceeds with his plan to leave Gaza. And that he needs a lot of money to pay for all the relocation of settlers, moving roads, repositioning the army, reshaping the infrastructure, etc. And that therefore, Sharon goes to Washington, either personally or through an emissary, to lobby for loan guarantees to fund this project."
"Do we, or do we not," these people wanted to know, "have a Jewish obligation to go to Capitol Hill and to lobby Congress not to give Sharon the guarantees?" To punish him, of course, for having done such a terrible thing.
Of course, it's not Sharon who would be punished, is it? Sharon, one can assume, will have all the protection he needs. The money will come from an already stretched budget. And it's kids -- poor kids -- who will go to school without the protection they need. Sharon, quite rightly, will have the medicines he needs. It will be others (about a quarter of Israel's population lives at or below the poverty line) who will pay the price. Sharon has finished with school; it will be other kids who will not have the basic educational resources that they need.
But does any of this come into play as these people -- highly committed and observant Jews -- talk about whether they ought to lobby against Israel in Congress? Not in the least. Because what matters is being right. Having the country, if we're going to have it at all, our way.
About this, the left and the right actually agree. The fellow from Europe says, "if Israel can't be precisely the country I wish it could be, let it not exist." And the right says, "If Sharon doesn't conduct his foreign policy the way that we, who have chosen to live in the United States, think he should, let's punish Israel's poor." That'll show 'em, won't it?
What's one to do? Flee back to Israel, what else? After all, there, where the people actually have to live with the consequences of their utterances, one could certainly expect the vitriol to be moderated. Right? Wrong. Very wrong. First, we were treated by the morning's paper to a picture of Rabbi Moshe Hirsch leading a delegation of fringe Ultra-Orthodox Jews to the Muqata'a at the conclusion of the 40 day mourning period for Yassir Arafat. Religious Jews going to mourn the death of the murderer of Jewish women, children and men? Absolutely. Why not? After all, if they believe that the creation of the State should have been left to Divine intervention, then it might as well be destroyed, no? So what's so strange about Jews going to pay their respects to the person who basically invented Palestinian terrorism? (If you can stomach the picture, and don't believe it could have happened, you're invited to take a look.
And then, the announcement in the news of a poll showing that 52% of those living in Gaza (most people call them "settlers," but for a variety of reasons, I'll simply refer to them as "Israeli citizens living in Gaza") were intent on resisting the withdrawal with physical force. Their own bodies, or worse.
But then, since that didn't seem to dissuade Sharon from continuing with his plan, they decided to up the ante. They decided that they'd walk around wearing orange stars on their clothes, the way that Jews in Nazi Germany had to wear yellow stars. To make the point that ? what point, exactly? That Adolph Hitler and Ariel Sharon are in some way comparable? That Sharon, no matter what one may think of him, can be accused of wanting to eradicate the Jews? That there's anything that the Reichstag of the 1930's and the Knesset of 2004 share in common?
So there they went. Parading around in orange stars (again, if you didn't see the spectacle, you can check out the headline, again from YNet), until the Ministry of Education said that kids could not come to school that way, and the broader public expressed outrage at the stars. Outrage, obviously, at the implication that the soldiers who will be ordered to carry out the withdrawal, and who will obey those orders, are akin to storm troopers. The kind of accusation, in a society such as this, that could easily start the whole thing unraveling. So the Gazan Israelis backed off, and dropped the stars. And said, "Oh, and we're sorry if we offended any survivors. That was the farthest thing from our minds." But forget the offense, for one moment. The really troubling thing is the attitude that "if we can't have OUR desired policy enacted, then we really don't know how to distinguish between the policy that IS enacted and the policies of the Nazis."
Today's news isn't getting better. The morning started off with IDF Chief of Staff Moshe (Boogy) Ya'alon, commenting on his meeting with the leaders of those Israeli citizens of Gaza and the West Bank, and his request that they tone down the rhetoric, and stop asking soldiers to refuse orders when the order to withdraw comes. They refused. "We can't," they said, "it's too late." A direct quote. Ya'alon spoke to the press afterwards and expressed his worry about the future of the State. And he used the word "churban," which means "destruction," exactly the word that we use to describe the destruction of the two temples, and the exiles that resulted. (Again, this morning's headline is here -- I highlighted the word "churban" for those for whom reading Hebrew is a bit difficult).
Tonight, it's still heating up. The news is reporting that earlier today, in the evacuation of an illegal settlement in Yizhar, shots were fired for the first time. The IDF is trying hard to downplay the incident, saying that a soldier simply fired in the air. Maybe. Maybe not. And in a another story, also tonight, a soldier was arrested today for encouraging others to refuse the order when it comes. And in still another story, in today's paper, Sharon is insisting that the order is going to come. If anything, he asserts, he plans to move up the timetable.
Reasonable minds can differ, obviously, as to whether the withdrawal is a good idea, or not. Those in favor have to explain why, if Israel withdraws under fire, the Palestinians will not simply keep up the fire and demand more? Or what Sharon has planned to make sure that Gaza doesn't become a terrorist Disneyland. And those opposed need to tell Israeli parents (who know that no matter what some Israelis may want, Europe and the US will force Israel out of Gaza eventually) how many more 18 and 19 year old kids should die defending and patrolling an area we can't hold on to, or perhaps more importantly, how, if Israel cannot get out of Gaza, it can get out of anywhere. And if it can't get out of anywhere, how it will avoid becoming an Apartheid State.
Tough questions on either side. Impossible questions on either side. But it's one thing to have an opinion, and another to decide that if things won't go the way I want, I'd rather have the whole enterprise topple. That's the one thing that left wingers in Europe, right wingers in the greater Metropolitan New York area, the anti-Zionist Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, and the Gaza dwelling star wearers all have in common. They agree that if it doesn't happen their way, it shouldn't happen at all.
What they all lack is a sense that though they'd rather things be otherwise, they'll stick with the enterprise no matter what. What they all lack is the sense that though they have strong opinions, they recognize that there might be some legitimacy to other viewpoints. What they are all missing is the Talmudic insight that discourse is genuinely religious -- and wholly Jewish -- when conflicting opinions co-exist on the same page, locked in respectful combat for generations to follow. What we, and they, are missing, is the sort of religious leadership which once made Judaism profound. We could use those Talmudic sages around these parts again.
Moshe "Boogy" Ya'alon, the IDF Chief of Staff, has reason to be worried. For even a cursory read of the biblical and rabbinic accounts of why Jerusalem fell thousands of years ago suggest that matters had much more to do with infighting among the Jews than the power of our enemies. That's something that all the characters listed above might do well to keep in mind.
For so far, as one reads the news on-line and in print, all we seem to have lost is our minds. What one wonders, though, and fears, is whether given everything that we've now become, we're not about to begin losing much, much more.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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