TAMUZ | The David H Sonabend Center for Israel | Israel at 75

As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of Israel, we look at the current situation and recognize the complexity and nuance needed to understand and connect with Israel. We have partnered with the Shalom Hartman Institute, a leading center of Jewish thought and education serving Israel and North America, to write and reflect on our hopes of where we can go from here.

We are in a moment of change, a tipping point of defining our values, and of speaking and acting upon them. The Hartman scholars who have contributed to this issue of TAMUZ call upon us to find ways to hold the particularist nature of our Jewish identity with the universalist nature of liberal democracy, continue to shape the Zionist dream, and think creatively about how to uphold, unite, and support the Jewish state.

We do this as the Jewish people, for our own sake as well as for the efforts to build a shared society to bridge and blend the different cultures and peoples that coexist in the heart of the Holy Land. Israel is a mosaic of diversity, which gives us hope, as well as an imperative to act.

Jewish peoplehood is both for Israeli citizens and for Jews in the diaspora. As American Jews, as the epitome of a minority within a democracy, we have an opportunity to raise our voices to make sure Israel treats minorities well, and to lean in and re-engage in the crucial underpinning of the future of Israel and its citizens.

At the same time, Yom Ha’atzmaut is a day of freedom and independence. It is the establishment of the modern State of Israel. Let us take this day, amidst all of the darkness, to also celebrate all that Israel and the Jewish people were, are, and can be. Let us also spread light.

The TAMUZ Team

FOR THE SAKE OF JUDAISM, THE JEWISH PEOPLE, AND THE JEWISH STATE

By Elana Stein Hain, Rosh Beit Midrash and Senior Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America

The State of Israel is a modern-day miracle. It is the culmination of thousands of years of striving, decades of political action, and now 75 years of achievement, hard work, joys, and tribulations. We, the Jewish people of the 21st century, are blessed by its existence in ways our ancestors could never have imagined.

THE WESTERN WALL ON SHAVUOT | DANIEL MAJEWSKY

For this reason, all who care about Israel but are troubled by its current trajectory have a responsibility to cultivate three simultaneous orientations right now. I will call them “For the Sake of Judaism,” “For the Sake of the Jewish People,” and “For the Sake of the Jewish State.” Each orientation has something deep to offer, but none is enough on its own.

“For the Sake of Judaism” is an orientation of protest: we cannot afford to look the other way when people do things in the name of Judaism that we find reprehensible. The Torah concept of hanifah (flattery) is a key idea in this orientation. Hanifah means letting people off the hook for doing something bad because they are influential, because they are family, because you need something they have, whatever the reason. A “For the Sake of Judaism” orientation rejects hanifah. It says we dare not let people off the hook when Judaism is perverted. We must call them out. Though this may ultimately be for their own good, the focus of this orientation is to establish the purity of our ideology, in this case, Judaism.

“For the Sake of the Jewish People” is an orientation that pushes us toward solidarity with our people. This is not a stance of finger wagging or condemnation, but a stance of mutual recognition and acceptance. We, as American Jews, must accept that Israeli Jews are different from us: they have different experiences, pressures, and ideologies. We cannot try to reshape them into our image of what they should be. And Israeli Jews must

accept this about American Jews as well. To be part of a global people is to acknowledge that we all need each other, that we share a common history and fate, that we impact one another, and that therefore we must actually accept one another as essential partners, as we are.

“For the Sake of the Jewish State” is an orientation of curiosity and of being willing to play a helping, rather than a lead, role. Instead of deciding how to make Israel better, we ask our allies in Israel how we can help. They give us the inside view, and we respond. Our allies include those who are ideologically aligned with us on the other side of the pond. But this orientation may also mean finding the moderates among those with whom we disagree and asking them how we can strengthen the non-extremist members of their group. A “For the Sake of the Jewish State” approach recognizes that our role is neither to call out nor to accept, but to let the changemakers within Israel take the lead and help us understand what we can do.

Different times and different challenges call for different orientations. As Israel turns 75, we, as American Jews, must mature in our relationship to the country. In cultivating all three of these orientations and finding balance among them, we will develop the resilience and honesty that an ongoing relationship requires.

JUDAISM AND DEMOCRACY IN CONVERSATION

By Tani Frank, Director of the Center for Judaism and State Policy, Shalom Hartman Institute

The Israeli political system is shifting. It’s becoming more and more clear that, although the democratic system is a parliamentary one, there is a widening gap between two major political blocks. This gap hasn’t anything to do with right-wing or left-wing policies with regards to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. Rather, the gap first emerged around Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu and his legal affairs; one block supports his rule and won’t challenge him, and the other block refuses to form a coalition with him.

These blocks have evolved to stand on opposite sides of an ideological line reflecting the dual identity of the State of Israel as Jewish and democratic. The current coalition, which emerged from an ongoing

campaign for a “Jewish State,” promotes legislation for the sake of Judaism, while the opposition fights judicial reform mainly for the sake of democracy.

If this trend continues, Judaism will come to be perceived as a value belonging only to right-wing, Orthodox Jews, while democracy will be seen as a value belonging only to left-wing, secular Israelis. Furthermore, demographic predictions for Israeli society suggest that within 40 years, the ultraOrthodox (Haredi) community will make up a third of the total Israeli population. As a result, the meaning of Judaism may eventually be limited to the most extreme interpretations of Jewish tradition and halakhah (Jewish law). This, in turn, will deepen the growing ideological gap between diaspora Jewry and Israelis to the point that it may become irreversible.

We must deal with both parts of this equation: reclaiming Judaism and reclaiming democracy. The way to do this is first and foremost to acknowledge they are not necessarily in contradiction. Nowadays, when some accuse the Israeli Supreme Court of being, among other things, anti-religious or even anti-Jewish, we must reiterate the fact that there are many roots for democratic values within Judaism.

The liberal idea of humanism is one example of a democratic value also found in Judaism. The Knesset recently debated the question of expanding the death penalty to terrorists. The leader of the extremist Otzma Yehudit

party, Itamar Ben Gvir, claimed that such a law is in line with Jewish moral values. The reality is the complete opposite: there is a consensus among most rabbis that the death penalty is against halakhah. According to the Talmud, only a Sanhedrin—a rabbinical court of 71 rabbis—may sentence a person to death. Jewish sources further state that even when there is such a court, it should not execute a death sentence more than once every 70 years. Despite this, and even though the Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef opposed the legislation under debate, most of the voices speaking out against it spoke from liberal-democratic positions, rather than Jewish ones.

In contrast to the situation in which we find ourselves today, my vision for Israeli society integrates liberal concepts into both its Jewish and its democratic natures. This will make it possible for Judaism and democracy to be in conversation. We can build such a vision by realizing that legislation fueled by a wrongful interpretation of Judaism cannot be fought with counterarguments fueled by democratic narratives alone, but must also be countered by better interpretations of Judaism. This is only possible if those who are most committed to democracy do not give up on Judaism. We must simultaneously show communities in Israel that are rejecting democracy that supporting democracy does not mean rejecting Judaism. In these times, this is the right thing to do, lest we lose what remains of the solidarity that we still have.

RECLAIMING THE ZIONIST VISION

By Yehuda Kurtzer, President, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America

Jews often imagine the future by recounting the past; and so perhaps the biggest and most audacious vision for Israel’s future is the very one that animated its founding: a liberal political project, a state that fulfills the baseline existential need for Jewish sovereignty and self-determination in the land of Israel, organized as a liberal democracy that serves all its citizens and inhabitants equally. This is the promise of the preamble and some key paragraphs in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Rereading it is a reminder that Zionists once thought possible—insisted even— that the State of Israel could house both a

state that we see as Jewish and a state that serves the interests of all of its citizens, and that the land of Israel could accommodate the national dreams and the feeling of athomeness for both Jews and Palestinians.

This vision often feels implausible now, considering the mounting political failures of liberalism in the land of Israel; but there was a time not that long ago, prior to the creation of the State, when Zionism was all about dreaming impossible dreams. Early Zionism spoke a language of taking on the responsibility of no less than repairing the condition of the Jewish people; it was a pluralist discourse, encompassing a variety

DAVID BEN-GURION PROCLAIMS THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL, MAY 14, 1948

of competing ideas; and it was aspirational, dreaming of a different and often utopian future. Within the span of two generations, from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th, Zionism went from being the pipe dream of marginal lunatics to the dominant program and plan of the Jewish people. But Zionism’s transformation from an ideological movement into a political reality came at the cost of some of the core aspirational ideas that motivated it to begin with, and increasingly it comes at the cost of its own failure of accountability to some important moral aspects of the original vision. Its primary successes, selfdetermination and sovereignty, should have been treated as prerequisites for realizing its moral aspirations—and not the end goals. The Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz claimed that Zionism was rooted in the need to not “be ruled by goyim.” But this should be the floor, never the ceiling.

Gaps abound now between Israel’s liberal democratic ideal for itself and the present reality, in the continued structural inequalities that Israel’s Palestinian citizens face; in the enduring occupation, which leaves Palestinians in limbo about their own right to self-determination and breeds human rights abuses; in Israel’s inconsistent policies on immigration and asylum; in the struggle for religious pluralism; in the rising tide of extremism on the Israeli right, that not only threatens the ideals of liberalism but seeks to redefine Israel’s identity.

To address all these challenges is precisely the agenda of liberal Zionism, as a continuation of the project of dreaming that formed the State of Israel to begin with. To treat these challenges as evidence of liberal Zionism’s failure is not just to admit defeat now; it is to treat Zionism as though it were a mere political program, and not the ideology of the Jewish people that brought us to this moment.

The urgencies of political state-building took priority in the 1940s and 1950s over other aspects of the Zionist dream. When you are seeking to survive, everything else—morality, spirituality, culture—moves to the back seat. But for a people that has dreamed for so long in moral and cultural technicolor, survival can never remain the goal indefinitely. At some point, the Jewish people’s responsibility to work toward its betterment becomes paramount.

If liberal Zionism is in the DNA of the original political Zionism, and if Zionism is premised on the capacity of the Jewish people to dream its way into the future, then it is time to reclaim our imagination of what Zionism can do and what the State of Israel might be. If this is not forthcoming in the political systems, it is attainable in our educational systems. And it is not just for the benefit of the State of Israel and all its inhabitants; it is for the benefit of the entire Jewish people, who were once mobilized and dignified by the power of an idea to change the world and bring it about.

SHARING THE SAME TABLE

By Sara Labaton, Director of Teaching and Learning, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America

In February, I watched from a distance as thousands of Israelis took to the streets protesting for democracy. I was reminded that at a simpler point in my life, the existence of a Jewish state meant eating burgers at a kosher McDonald’s. As a child, my operating assumption was that everything in the Land of Milk and Honey tasted better, and the world there was my kosher oyster. It thrilled me that Israelis dubbed pigs in a blanket Moshe Batevah (Moses in the basket) and that the name of the department store Mashbir evoked the biblical root shever (grain) that appears in the Genesis story of Joseph’s brothers’ journey to Egypt to buy food.

My trips to Israel have allowed me to expand my gastronomic horizons in a way that keeping kosher in the U.S. inhibits. I’ve nibbled halvah in the shuk, eaten shakshuka in Jaffa, and sampled cheeses that I hadn’t known existed. But it’s more than culinary curiosity. The history of my eclectic family background is represented all over Israel in both religious customs and culinary delights. When my spouse and I took

our baby to the pulmonologist in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem, we would visit the shop next door for Yerushalmi kugel, recalling my mother’s memories of eating it with her Hasidic grandmother on the Lower East Side. On a trip to the shuk one Friday, an appliance store owner gestured us to the back of his shop, where homemade kibbe soup simmered on a burner and tasted like the one my Syrian grandmother made back in Brooklyn. With this swirling array of flavors and textures, Israel offers me a version of myself, as cultures previously separated by regional boundaries are now side by side in market stalls.

HOW TO COOK IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL

As I have come to terms with the explosive tensions of the real Israel, I have discovered that food figures in major debates around identity and politics. The Rabbinate’s monopoly on kashrut and the politics of shemitah (the biblical sabbatical year) illuminate the paradoxes of a Jewish democracy. I’ve tried to support food establishments with alternative kosher supervision, including a tiny Italian gem with polenta I still dream of. Treif food on Hebrew menus once shocked me, particularly that first time I noticed scallops on offer. Gradually, I came to appreciate these establishments and the people who patronize them as bulwarks against creeping theocratic tendencies. They led me to a (half serious) vow that if I were ever to relinquish kashrut, I would do so in Jerusalem as an instantiation of the rabbinic concept of an aveirah lishmah, a transgression committed for a higher purpose: the higher purpose of a robustly democratic Israel realized through the consumption of treif in the Holy City.

If the restaurants of West Jerusalem represent my hopes for separation between shul and state, a charming café-bookshop I know in East Jerusalem problematizes the Zionist adage that before 1948, Israel was a land without a people for a people without a land. Once, after coffee and knafeh with a friend, I browsed the shelves and noticed a familiar looking postcard: “Falafel: the National Food of Israel!” it proclaimed. Only the word Israel was crossed out, and Palestine inserted in its place. An English language Gazan

cookbook that read like a political manifesto was prominently displayed nearby. Palestinian cookbooks, I have learned, vary in presentation. Some refer to ingredients Palestinians cannot procure because of the occupation, while others studiously avoid mentioning Israel, whether to sell more books by appearing non-political or to assert a fierce cultural independence. This land already had a people, with whom my people must learn to live and, one day, I hope, thrive.

A scholar friend once brought me to Hisham’s Palace in Jericho, a Palestinian heritage site that contains early Islamic archeological ruins with a massive, intact mosaic. I went to a little shop down the road for snacks and water and was struck by the difference in products from the typical Israeli makolet (corner store). There was bottled water from Turkey and fare I did not recognize. Both the palace and the shop demonstrated how this land, which usually feels like a second home, contains parts that are foreign and inaccessible to me.

Last summer, my family and I ate at a delightful food truck festival in the Valley of Hinnom, the ancient site of child sacrifice anathematized by the prophets. It reminded me of another food truck experience I had years ago. Then, for 25 shekels, I ate an iconic Palestinian meal prepared by the Arab chef of a gourmet, and decidedly non-kosher, Jerusalem restaurant that had obtained rabbinical supervision for the evening. With delicious, yet affordable food, Jews lining up to partake of Palestinian

cuisine, and religious and secular Jerusalemites breaking bread together, the presence of that food truck felt like the arrival of messiah astride a donkey.

The Passover seder opens with an invitation, “whoever is hungry, come and eat.” Sometimes it is our family, sometimes our friends and neighbors, and sometimes virtual strangers who end up around our table. The Bible invokes the Israelite exodus from Egypt to justify compassion towards the stranger,

and I imagine that the rabbis who wrote the Haggadah considered Passover as an opportunity to extend invitations to those living on the margins. At this moment I pray that the table of Israel extends in multiple directions to accommodate, feed, and nourish all the people of this land.

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