Repel Antisemitism, Reinvigorate Judaism

By GIL TROY

The Forward, THE IVORY TOWER, AUGUST 9, 2002

As Rosh Hashana looms, the Jewish people find themselves at war. Israel, the Jewish state, is being assaulted physically, psychically, existentially, its very legitimacy and viability questioned. Antisemitism has reappeared with a vengeance, often cloaked in anti-Zionist rhetoric, giving that ancient pathology a new, politically correct visage. Especially since the Passover Eve massacre in Netanya, a particularly vicious bloodbath that overshadowed worldwide celebrations of the festival of liberation — and elicited howls of celebration from too many Palestinians and Muslims worldwide — most American Jews have been traumatized, galvanized, mobilized.

During this season of reflection, it behooves us to ponder what took us so long to awake to the cruelty of our enemies, to the seriousness of the threat to Israel and to ourselves. This past spring was the logical and horrible culmination of events that began with Yasser Arafat's launching of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000 and included such low points as the Ramallah lynchings, the Dolphinarium and Sbarro bombings, the United Nations-sponsored orgy of antisemitism in Durban, South Africa, the modern blood libel accusing the Jews of being behind the September 11 attacks and the Daniel Pearl murder.

We all must beat our breasts doubly hard during the annual Yom Kippur confessionals of collective guilt: Ashamnu! We are guilty. We took too long to respond compassionately and generously to the individual Israeli victims of terrorism. Chatanu! We have sinned. We have allowed Israeli hostages in Lebanon — and their families — to languish without doing all that we can to help. Pashanu! We have failed. Who knows how different events might have been had our community been more united in outrage initially, and had we been able to convince the world to condemn the Palestinian abandonment of negotiations and virtual abrogation of the Oslo accords in September 2000, rather than blaming the victim, Israel, after it made unprecedented territorial concessions.

Nevertheless, even as we beat our breasts, even as we rally and lobby, fund-raise and friend-raise, visit Israel and adopt Israeli victims, even as we redouble our efforts to beat back the worldwide Islamicist threat and restore peace and stability to the United States and Israel, we must not allow these crises to define our lives or our Judaism. Judaism is more than saying gevalt every time you watch the news. Zionism is more than defending Israel against its critics' libels. Israel is more than just the headache of the Jewish people.

Precisely now, amid our anger and despair, as politics seems to define and depress us daily, we need to embrace the joy and spirituality in Judaism, the deeper idealism in Zionism, and the many benefits derived from the privilege of living in the era of the third Jewish commonwealth, a time when Israel is an anchoring reality in our collective and individual lives, not simply an ancient apparition. We will suffer in the long term if a new generation of Israel activists rises up with no deep love or appreciation for Zionism or Judaism. We must not only arm our students and ourselves with facts for the propaganda war, we must re-engage in the 4,000-year-old triangular relationship between the Jewish people, its tradition and its homeland. This relationship has and should define us, sustain us and inspire us, because Israel is ours.

Moreover, we cannot let our foes define our agenda. Even as we battle external enemies, we have much work to do internally. Our undertakings for the new year must include:

• a new Jewish unity initiative, figuring out how to get beyond our intra-communal prejudices, to stop religious Jews from caricaturing secular Jews as "goyim" and to stop secular Jews from demonizing religious Jews as Khomeinis;

• a new Jewish rhetorical initiative, learning how to disagree with each other — and with thoughtful, well-intentioned critics — with kinder, gentler language and a more open and self-critical approach;

• a new Jewish linguistic initiative, rededicating ourselves to mastering Hebrew, our people's language, the language of our homeland, and the keystone to so much Jewish learning and living;

• a new Jewish literacy initiative, challenging us all to learn more, learn deeply, learn regularly, and not to content ourselves to dine out our entire adult lives on Jewish morsels gleaned during childhood;

• a new Jewish values initiative, pushing us as individuals to become more moral, and demanding that our institutions, and especially our day schools, be known as centers of mitzvot and mentshlichkayt, not of materialism and careerism;

• a new Jewish hospitality initiative, reorienting our organizations, especially our synagogues, to be more welcoming and more dynamic, less elitist and less immutable;

• a new Jewish spirituality initiative, reforming North American Judaism, which is a particular expression of Judaism, to be less trendy and more eternal, more countercultural and less conformist, more rooted in our authentic Jewish traditions and less reflective of our American, Christian or consumerist surroundings;

• a new Jewish community initiative, creating new Jewish contexts for individual Jews to build meaningful lives together and escape some of the loneliness, alienation and individuation endemic to modern American life;

• a new Jewish nationalist initiative, redefining a new Zionism for 21st-century America, once again seeing Jewish nationalism and Israel as answers to communal challenges, as responses to assimilation, individuation, antisemitism and our incessant bickering.

Some of these initiatives build on the groundwork established during the "peace and prosperity" years of the 1990s. Others would take our community in new and necessary directions. All remind us that we must go beyond advocacy, that we must take advantage of the greater awareness many American Jews have of Jewish issues today, to challenge us as individuals and as a community to grow.

Over millennia of oppression, we Jews have become quite adept at renewing ourselves internally while defending ourselves from external threats. Throughout Jewish history, traumas often triggered creative initiatives: Rabbinic Judaism blossomed after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple. Chasidism emerged from the twin shocks of the Khmelnitski pogroms and Sabbetai Zevi's false messianism. More recently, creative new modes of Jewish living and identity flourished in Israel and North America after the Germans devastated European Jewry.

In short, our grandchildren will judge us by two equally important criteria: how we responded to the challenges of today — and how we transcended them.

The second printing of Gil Troy's latest book, "Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today" (Bronfman Jewish Education Centre), was just released.