Against Defeatism

“Pessimism,” says my teacher Donniel Hartman, “is a luxury we cannot afford.” There is simply too much at stake at this political moment in Israel.

By now, regular readers of this blog know that I’m utterly preoccupied by the Israeli pro-democracy protests. It’s been two weeks since I’ve returned from Jerusalem, and I’m still processing all that I experienced. As the very fabric of Israeli society appears to be unraveling. I have no doubt that the righteous protesters in Israel are fighting for the nation’s soul.

“For me, Judaism is the antonym of defeatism and hopelessness. So, for that matter, is my Zionism.
”

As you know, Netanyahu’s coalition just struck down the Supreme Court’s ability to declare extreme legislation “unreasonable.” This is just the first salvo in an attack on one of the basic pillars of democracy: a system of checks and balances of the legislature by an independent judiciary. No wonder the despicable National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir—a racist thug with a terrorist background—tweeted that “the salad bar is open.” What he meant: This initial legislation is just the appetizer; a full entrée of laws castrating the court and dismantling democratic norms is now on its way to being served from the legislative kitchen.

This is what those demonstrations in the streets of Israel are fighting against.

I’ve written about this in previous posts over the past few months. But today I’m struck by what I’m hearing from some American Jews, and I’m distressed.

Since my return, I’ve heard from many acquaintances—in person, via email, and on social media:

Many are despondent about what’s taking place in Israel.

Some have suggested that they’ve lost hope in Israel’s future: the ultra-nationalist, theocratic takeover is nearly complete.

Some have said that, after a lifetime of supporting Israel, that they’re “out,” and can no longer pay lip service to a regime so antithetical to their democratic values.

Some are saying they will now refocus their identity as a “proud Diaspora Jew,” shaping a Jewish identity that excludes Zionism.

Some well-known Israeli pundits—and not necessarily those of the left—are grieving Israel’s future.

Some rabbis in prominent synagogues have announced that they can no longer recite Tefillat HaMedina / the Prayer for Israel at Shabbat services. Periodically we hear of rabbis (in non-prominent communities) declare that they are non-Zionist, if not outright anti-Israel.

And so on.

I don’t know how widespread those feelings of defeat are, but the sentiment is growing. And for every Jew who declares that they’re “out,” there will no doubt be a much larger number of silent resignations, of Jews who simply will construct their Jewish lives without Israel.  

I feel the pain that is inherent in every one of those exchanges. These are the heartfelt reflections of people who historically have acknowledged that Israel’s situation is different from ours: its battle against bloodthirsty enemies is existential. But many of these same individuals are now asking: How can I support a regime whose values have so profoundly diverged from my own?

But I can’t go there. And it’s desperately important that you don’t, either. We cannot afford pessimism—not when there is so much on the line.

This is my respectful response to all those friends and students who have shared their fears and concerns with me:

Our Israeli friends need our support, now more than ever. I’m quite clear that the battle that Israel is facing—from within this time—is as much an existential battle as it has ever faced from external enemies.

All around the country, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been demonstrating for more than half a year, every Saturday night. (Israel’s population is approximately 9.7 million people. Do the math and be amazed by the breathtaking, massive proportion of the country that has taken to the streets in the name of democracy!)

Here are three more points I’d ask every person who is wavering to keep in mind:

(1)   The protests have been going on for 30 weeks!, and show no sign of weakening.

(2)   The patriotism of the demonstrators. The rallies are oceans of blue-and-white, with flags everywhere. Most rallies open or close with “Hatikvah.” In a world where the right wing tends to co-opt patriotic symbols, this is remarkable.

Consider this, by way of contrast. During the Trump years, I and many of you went to our share of political rallies: the Women’s Marches and Black Lives Matter. We believed in those causes. But what would it have taken for us to go and demonstrate every single Saturday night for months on end? That’s the depth of the commitment Israel’s pro-democracy camp has made.

And for that matter: Imagine showing up at a Women’s March or BLM rally with an American flag and singing the national anthem. It would have been more than strange—it would have been completely tone-deaf and out of place. By contrast, the rallies in Israel are a united call of the authentic voice of Zionism: democratic, patriotic, and inclusive.

(3)   What about the “insurmountable demographics” that we keep hearing about? Some of the defeatism has stemmed from a great resignation that these battles will never end, as birthrates among the religious right soar.

But that misses the point of what these demonstrations are all about. Because the revolt against Netanyahu’s coalition is not primarily a leftist revolt. It is a great upheaval by the broad democratic MAJORITY of the country: the center-left, center, and center-right. They may disagree on a wide variety of public policies, but who completely agree about the heart of the matter: That Zionism and Judaism are inherently democratic, and that an assault on Israel’s basic democratic institutions endangers everyone.

For me, Judaism is the antonym of defeatism and hopelessness. So, for that matter, is my Zionism.

For those with long memories, there have been dark times before. Israel emerged from the ashes of the Shoah—when 1/3 of the Jews in the world were murdered and the very question of any Jewish future at all was worth considering. There was June 1967—and a news blackout when it wasn’t clear for several days whether or not Israel had been wiped off the map. There was October 1973, when Jews ran from their synagogues on Yom Kippur to fight off a multilateral sneak attack by there enemies. There was, and remains, the threat of a nuclear Iran.

In none of these moments did we concede defeat or abandon our vision of the future. 

Diaspora voices in this struggle are crucial. Israelis are telling us that we are desperately needed for this battle. If you’ve ever been inspired by Israel’s seemingly endless reserves of innovation and perseverance in the face of implacable enemies… well, this is the moment when that inspiration and fortitude is needed more than ever.

Reliable polls show that this government has lost the backing of its supporters and a significant majority of Israelis—left, center, and the democratic right. A line has been crossed by the empowerment of theocratic fascists: that’s what those demonstrations are about.

There are no guarantees. Who knows how much damage this regime can wreak before it collapses or is voted out? But I do know this: If America’s liberal Jews sit this one out, or if we renege on the seventy-five-year commitment to the State of Israel, we will be complicit in empowering the forces of an anti-democratic theocracy in the Jewish state.

I’m writing these words on Tu B’Av, a date in the Jewish calendar devoted to love. “Love” is the way I was raised to describe our relationship to Israel. Love, of course, demands conviction and dedication over the long haul. We say to people whom we love: “My love for you is not conditional. We will, on occasion, disappoint one another. I will challenge you and criticize you when you let me down. But my commitment to you is undying.”

If you share similar sentiments, please: Do not submit to defeat. Recall the words of the Talmud, written in tears at another time of Jewish anguish:

,כּל הַמִּתְאַבֵּל עַל יְרוּשָׁלַיִם — זוֹכֶה וְרוֹאֶה בְּשִׂמְחָתָהּ
.וְשֶׁאֵינוֹ מִתְאַבֵּל עַל יְרוּשָׁלַיִם — אֵינוֹ רוֹאֶה בְּשִׂמְחָתָהּ

Whoever mourns for Jerusalem will merit to see her future joy,
and whoever does not mourn for Jerusalem will not see her future joy. (Ta’anit 30b)

Those words tell me that we will win this struggle, too. But we must not surrender to despair. To be part of the grand wonder of Israel means we must share in her battles, and not give up on the vision of what the state could and should be.  

Philip Roth: An Appreciation of the Wicked Child

I am one of the Exiles of Newark, New Jersey.

My father was raised on Goldsmith Avenue, became a Bar Mitzvah at Young Israel, and went to Weequahic High School, class of ’59. His mother was born in Newark; both she and my grandfather spent their careers teaching in the Newark public school system. My great-grandparents’ graves are in Newark, in the McClellan Street cemeteries.

No doubt I would have been there too. Except that, to bastardize the words of Agnon, through a historical accident—the upward mobility of postwar Jews, the riots of 1967—I was born in one of the villages of the Diaspora.

The Old B'nai Jeshurun building in Newark, now Hopewell Baptist Church.

It always struck me that Newark must have been one of the most extraordinary communities of the American Exile. All the currents of Jewish life in early 20th century America—socialism, Zionism, Reform, Orthodoxy, Yiddish culture, labor—flourished in its environs. In 1948, nearly 60,000 Jews lived in Newark[1], served by scores of synagogues. The caliber of rabbis, cultural figures, political leaders, labor and social justice advocates, business leaders, and philanthropists that emerged from that place is astounding. And it disappeared so incredibly quickly.

But Newark endured in the stories of Philip Roth, and for that reason I always took Roth’s writings personally. As he dissected the psyche of the city and its expatriates, I told myself I was discovering my origins. (That’s ridiculously romantic, of course. Like many Jews of Eastern European descent, my family lived in Newark for barely two and a half generations. But we’ve got very little to go on about the Old Country—the shtetlach and hamlets that were annihilated by the Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, et al—so Newark is all I’ve got.)

Roth left Newark, but wouldn’t leave it behind. Newark—with its concentration of Jews anxious to become optometrists and entertainment lawyers and accountants; its polio terror and stickball in the streets; its racial tensions and Nazi paranoia—was a prism through which he wrote about America.

Now that Roth is dead, the American Jewish community can start doing what it always does: remaking him in our image. Which is rather a shame.

Because Roth at his core was the wicked child of the Seder. He dared to fling our pieties in our faces and say, “Yes—but what does all this mean to you?” Starting with Goodbye, Columbus and running like a crimson thread throughout his work, he satirized and criticized the Jewish community as only an insider could.

Consider his devastating short story, “The Conversion of the Jews” (1959). Ozzie Freedman is a bored Hebrew school kid of the sort that the Coen Brothers captured so perfectly in the movie A Serious Man. He is punished by the rabbi and other authorities for asking “dangerous” questions, the kind that the wicked child asks. Ultimately Ozzie ends up on the roof, threatening to jump unless the Rabbi and the adults answer the question that got him rebuked in the first place: “Do you think that an almighty God could make a child without intercourse?”

It’s so perfect, because Ozzie found the exact question to prick everyone’s sensibilities: the rabbi’s platitudes, the newly-emancipated liberal Jews’ boundaries with their Christian neighbors, and of course the sexual obsessions which Roth would explode in Portnoy’s Complaint.

Or consider his 1993 novel Operation Shylock. The narrative itself is outrageous. A famous Jewish writer named Philip Roth discovers that some nutjob has taken the alter ego “Philip Roth” and is spreading the gospel of “Diasporism,” leading Jews out of Israel and back to Europe—an antisemitic fantasy!

But here’s the rub: like any great critic, Roth knew intimately the subject he criticized, which ultimately rebounded back on himself. If he mocked Israel as a modern Jewish shibboleth, Operation Shylock also shows a deep intimacy with its people, its culture, and its totems. For instance, his true (not fictional) dialogues with Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld in the book (Appelfeld died just this past January) reveal sensitive insights about what, exactly, Jewish identity means at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Ultimately Roth’s subject wasn’t Judaism, it was America. He asked: Why shouldn’t the Jewish lens be as valid as any other lens through which we can understand America? After all, Faulkner wrote about America, but through the perspective of the American South. So did Steinbeck, via the western frontier. So did Ellison, and Kerouac, and so on. America is big and complex and refracted into a thousand hues. Who’s to say that America’s freedoms and dysfunctions aren’t perfectly represented through the eyes of Bucky Cantor, a Newark playground director terrorized by polio (Nemesis, 2010)? Or Coleman Silk, the classics professor who gets caught in the wheels of the political correctness machine (The Human Stain, 2000)?

Or, for that matter, Roth’s masterful creation Swede Levov, the protagonist of American Pastoral (1997)? His name is the perfect encapsulation of Roth’s work: a Newark Jew who marries a (shiksa) beauty queen, flees to the Jersey suburbs, and expects that his Nordic looks and nickname will help him shed his history. But the shtetl, and the past, is as present as his surname.

America does fascinating things to the identities of its immigrants and their descendants. Those complexities are more than enough to stake a career on. We were blessed to be of a generation that had such an articulate master to challenge our assumptions and satirize our self-righteousness. If we grapple with Roth seriously, we will understand ourselves better—because it will be much harder to hide.

[1] William B. Helmreich, The Enduring Community: The Jews of Newark and Metrowest, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999, p.30.

Writing Roundup: A Few Recent Books with Writings of Mine

November was a prolific month. I have articles in three recent books which you may be interested in:

First, THE FRAGILE DIALOGUE: NEW VOICES OF LIBERAL ZIONISM, edited by Stanley Davids and Larry Englander, is a collection of essays about Reform Zionism in America, Israel, and elsewhere. I contributed a transatlantic dialogue with Rabbi Charley Baginsky comparing the history and nature of Zionism in the liberal Jewish movements of America and the U.K.

A LIFE OF MEANING, edited by Dana Evan Kaplan, discusses Jewish spiritual practices. I wrote an essay on “Creating a Life of Meaning by Caring for Others,” which includes some reflections on the inspiration of my teacher, the Rabbanit Kapach.

Finally, NAVIGATING THE JOURNEY: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE JEWISH LIFE CYCLE, edited by Peter Knobel, includes an article of mine about integrating Tzedakah into the practice of daily living.

Check ‘em out!