A Generation Gap in Israel

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, April 20, 2007

It very unusual for a group of people to object to not being required to pay a tax. Most of the tax revolts I can think of are of the opposite variety. But in my readings during my sabbatical I encountered a record of protests in response to a group of people not being allowed to pay their taxes. The people were Jews of the Diaspora, the time period the mid 60’s BCE, the government was the Roman Empire, and the tax they were forbidden to pay was the half shekel collected before Passover, their annual contribution to the Temple in Jerusalem. Around the year 60 BCE the Roman Governor of Asia Valerius Flaccus prevented gold from being sent by the Jews of Asia Minor to Jerusalem. The historian Erich Gruen reports: “The action not only provoked resentment in Flaccus’s province but also stirred a hornet’s nest of opposition in Rome itself.” The Jews of Asia Minor were at this time highly assimilated, and well integrated into the communities in which they lived. They spoke Greek and were students of philosophy and the science. Still these Jews, who had no intention of moving to the Holy Land, still felt that the tie they had with their Jewish homeland was important enough to them, that in the face of new rules potentially breaking that connection, they “ sent up a howl.”

As the eve of Israel Independence Day approaches, I worry about whether our own highly assimilated, well integrated American Jewish community feels that same level of connection with the modern state of Israel. Last week, I met with this year’s Introduction to Judaism Class to introduce the modern holidays of Yom HaShoah and Yom HaAtzmaut. We have a great group of adult students this year. They are attending class regularly, and reading the assigned books. They are a somewhat younger group than usual with several couples who have just finished school, and they have been asking great questions.

While talking about Yom HaAtzmaut, I asked them two questions. I asked them whether the existence of the State of Israel gave them a sense of pride and whether it made them feel safer in the world. Twenty years ago and perhaps even today, if I had been talking to an older, more traditional crowd, I might still get a predominance of yes’s to those questions, but that is not what I heard from this class last week.

Back in the 1960’s the image of the Israeli as a new kind of Jew, tough and physical, defying the previous stereotype of Jews as the weak, pale, victims of history was very welcome. The Jewish community world wide focused on Israel’s accomplishments as a young democracy, along with its agricultural and economic progress. Between 1967 and 1973, formative years for the postwar baby-boom generation, Israeli culture filled the American Jewish community. If we danced in those years in Jewish settings it was Israeli dancing, and if we sang around the campfire, we sang Israeli songs. Being connected to Israel met our needs. It allowed us to feel Jewish even if we weren’t particularly religious or interested in God or ritual observance.. In addition, even if very few of us ever seriously contemplated moving to Israel, we were close enough to the Holocaust to see the existence of the state of Israel as an important insurance policy for all of world Jewry.

Jews who are now in their 20’s and 30’s grew up in very different times. Israel post Intifada 1 and 2 is presented as the Goliath and not the David. The shift of the Israeli economy from socialism to capitalism has been very successful in some ways, especially with regard to high tech development- but while the kibbutz had its own special romance, only a small group of Chicago school economists can wax poetic and idealistic about the triumph of the free market Within the Reform movement, having spent the last several decades struggling for our rightful place as Reform Jews in Israel society, we have often stressed the negative in discussing the role of religion in Israeli society.

In addition, the anti-Israel feeling which emerged after the Six Day War has intensified and become more widespread over the last decade. Israelis, quite willing to criticize their own government and members of the world wide Jewish community who call upon the Jewish state to live up to its prophetic vision, are joined by other critics. These critics are not committed to loving correction, but often demonize the Jewish state and seek to isolate Israel in the world community For all these reasons, young Jews are as likely to feel shame as pride, or even more likely, a sense of confusion and paralysis. Rather than making Jews feel more secure, there is a fear that anti-Israel sentiment will make anti-Semitism more acceptable and more difficult to combat.

There are many obvious and rational explanations for the unfortunate but well documented falling away of American Jews from Israel, but if you ask a different question, you get a very different answer. When I asked that same class, whether those who had been to Israel, even for a very short time, found their visit meaningful, and whether it enhanced their sense of themselves as Jewish, or heightened their sense of spiritual connections, I got many more positive responses. Being in relationship with Israel is very different than just thinking about Israel. As people reflected upon their own personal experiences, what came through was love, something less calculating and based on deeper connections. Wondering about the difference in response depending on what questions I asked, I went looking into our traditional texts for words that would shed light on our complicated relationship with Israel.

At this time of year, it is customary to study Pirke Avot. In chapter 5 there is a section whose conclusion is often quoted, as it is the standard text on which to base a sermon on controversy. You may be familiar with this text:

Every controversy that is in the Name of Heaven shall in the end lead to a permanent result, but every controversy that is not in the Name of Heaven shall not lead to a permanent result. Which controversy was that which was in the Name of Heaven? Such was the controversy of Hillel and Shammai. And that which was not in the Name of Heaven? Such was the controversy of Korah and all his company.

But often the first part of that paragraph is ignored. Let me share that with you:

Whenever love depends upon some material cause, with the passing away of that cause, the love, too, passes away; but if it be not depending upon such a cause, it will not pass away for ever. Which love was that which depended upon a material cause? Such was the love of Ammon and Tamar. And that which depended upon no such cause? Such was the love of David and Jonathan.

I wonder whether much of the love of the American Jewish community for Israel, was for a period of time, narcissistic, not so much ”I love you” as “I love the way you make me feel.” The more trying times that we live in, require a love that is more mature. It is the love of a spouse or friend who says, I will stick by you in difficult times as in good times. It is the love of parents for children, when we are able to say, “I love you, even if I do not always like everything that you do.” It is the love of adult children for aging parents, a love that says, “I will be there when you need me.”

Twenty-five hundred years ago, in the time of the Second Commonwealth, Jews who very much considered themselves Alexandrians, Antiochenes, and Ephesians, “did not and would not turn their backs of Jerusalem.” Though Jerusalem was not home, it was still important to them, and not not just another foreign city. While their Judaism was beginning to become what we would today call a religion, it did not cease to be also a force that connected them to a land and a people.

It is my hope that our own generation will find a way to feel that there is, in Rabbi Jan Katzew’s words, “ a part of me in the East.” In addition to our sometimes being, of necessity, lawyers for Israel, I hope that we can also be lovers of Israel.