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.

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

“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.

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.