Everyone in the crowd/line was annoyed with someone else in the crowd/line. But really we should all have been annoyed with the bank. For not laying on more tellers, and for not arranging a more efficient and transparent method of waiting. (Since then the bank had a face-lift, and you take a number…)

I was reminded of this incident last night, when I picked up news of the anti-immigrant riots in South Tel Aviv. I was horrified, but not entirely surprised.

I have friends and family living in the area of last night’s riots. They have been complaining about the refugee/immigrant situation for a while now. I confess it was almost funny to watch them squirm as they expressed their concerns, because they are not right-wingers. I’m not sure they would even call themselves Zionists. One of them refused to take part in Tel Aviv’s Gay Parade because it was too mainstream – he walked with the Radical Gay Parade… So to hear him and others talk about crime and fear in their neighborhood due to the influx of illegal immigrants, demanded some listening.

In the last year or two tens of thousands of Africans fleeing from poverty and persecution have arrived in South Tel Aviv. This is, not surprisingly, a poor area of Tel Aviv. Rent is low. It has traditionally been populated by low-income mizrachim. Imagine what happens to such a neighborhood when 60,000 people arrive who cannot speak the language, have little access to any social services, and cannot legally work?

As my friends would admit in a half-whisper, in a pained acknowledgment of the danger of being misunderstood, crime is rife in their neighborhood now. Yes, since the influx of the Africans. Violence, burglaries, and general upheaval. One friend told me of screaming next door to her house. She went round to find an illegal kindergarten in a room full of African babies strapped in car seats (no room or personnel to let them move around). She can’t think for the noise and for the fear of these children’s well-being. I myself visited a clandestine kindergarten with over ten kids in a small room whose entrance is shared with a brothel. The looks in the eyes of the latter’s patrons give me nightmares to this day.

And the authorities do not function.

This issue has been left to fester. And politics abhors a vacuum. Or conversely, some politicians love a policy vacuum that they may fill with their own particular definition of the problem.

Last night politicians and hooligans moved to paint the problem in a very particular shade of blue and white. They turned the local, national, and they turned the administrative, ideological. They came to say that Israel cannot survive as a Jewish State if she continues to allow such people into her midst. And they said so in the worst possible way. Calling for “Death to the Sudanese”, calling such immigrants/refugees a “cancer”, beating up people and smashing property, they blackened Israel’s name and – as my friends who looked on in horror and disgust pointed out – made it even more difficult to bring about an appropriate response to the issue at hand.

For even if the government now sets out on an mass deportation campaign of every Sudanese and Eritrean they may lay their hands on, until structural changes to immigration policy, refugee policy, border control and labor laws are put in place, this issue will swiftly return.

There is a deep pressing issue lying underneath the rhetoric of the “protesters” that ought to be addressed.

What is the purpose of the State of Israel?

Is the State first and foremost a mechanism to serve the Jewish people and advance its interests above all others?

Must the State of Israel see Liberal values of freedom and care, and Jewish values of loving the stranger as central to its raison d’etre even if these values extract a cost?

(I deliberately didn’t add a preposition between these two questions, because I don’t wish to assume that there is an either/or choice.)

These are questions at the heart of the relationship between Liberalism and Zionism that we intend the next Global Jewish Forum will tackle with appropriate seriousness.

And yet I am still left thinking about the line at the bank. Perhaps the riot last night – however it will be painted and judged by its demagoguery – was mainly the result of structural dysfunction? If swift and just processing of refugee claims had been in place, if social services were not already so stretched dealing with full citizens, if housing were not only left to the blind hand of the economy – perhaps these terrible events might have been avoided? Perhaps.

Related posts:

1. If Israel were nicer there’d be no anti-Semitism
2. Chapter 14: the Jews of South Africa
3. The Tel Aviv shooting

Okay, so first of all I have to admit that I have read Peter Beinart’s The Crisis of Zionism.

I’m not talking about the reviews of it (though I’ve read a lot of them, too) I read the actual book.

After reading the book and the reviews and the responses by Beinart and co, I can say that I have learned a few things:

1. I wish Peter Beinart had taken another year to complete the book. Judging by his consequent articles and appearances, I think The Crisis of Zionism would have been clearer in its intentions and stronger as a book had it had time to cook around Beinart’s head and environs for longer.
2. The unfavorable reviews of his book were mostly attacks. Not that they had an axe to grind, but that they had a ready-sharpened axe to use. Many reviews mostly critiqued Beinart for what he didn’t write and should have, rather than for what he did write and shouldn’t. Other reviews were almost like politicians in an interview, insisting that the real question was not the question Beinart had chosen to define as key, but that an entirely different question was key (on which the reviewer invariably had a book coming out).
3. I don’t know enough about Revisionist Zionism. My working assumption has always been that Israel’s actions vis a vis the Palestinians have been those of a sometimes-inefficient mostly-overwhelmed well-meaning liberal whose hands have been tied by a complex reality. But Beinart suggests that what he sees as the ills of Israeli foreign policy are not unintended failures of left-wing policy, but the deliberate strategy of a right-wing hegemony. I realized I know next to nothing about the ideology of the secular right wing in Israel. In Habonim they always taught you that A.D. Gordon was messiah and Jabotinsky was a crazy demon. Time to grow up, I think.
4. I still can’t think of a more unfortunately-worded concept than “Zionist BDS”. Guaranteed to alienate both non-Zionist boycotters and Zionist non-boycotters. Who does he have left?
5. Placing the emphasis on democracy rather than occupancy may prove to be the most interesting contribution. Beinart suggests the problem is not Israel’s occupation of disputed lands. After all, which country does not occupy once-disputed lands? The issue is down to the lack of democratic rights offered to the residents of those lands. Jews do indeed have a right to live in Hebron, or anywhere on land liberated in 1967. But ever since then we have deprived the indigenous population of their democratic rights. What do we intend to do about that, as we approach the end of our fifth decade in this situation? Disappointingly enough, I didn’t find one review of the book that addressed this question.

At Makom we don’t necessarily agree on any of my above points. But we do all agree that the presentation of any crucial issue about Israel must be multi-vocal and not binary.

The way in which the debate about Israel’s Jewish and Democratic future has been reduced to a fight between two sides of a book is nothing less than an intellectual and moral disgrace.

This confrontational (and overwhelmingly male!) representation of the issues will only mark our differences with clearer and more indelible ink. Indelible ink very rarely allows for development, creativity, and learning.

As Makom begins to gear up for our third Global Jewish Forum, this time on Liberalism and Zionism, we hope to offer an exploration that is deeper, broader, and more creative than a boxing match.

Related posts:

1. Reviewing the Reviews
2. Tear Sheeting
3. Reports of demise

The photo almost looks like it was born for a captions competition, doesn’t it?

A thought-bubble from the young Haredi’s head might read, “Now where did I put that rock?” or the woman might be thinking, “Jeez, living in photoshop is so radical!”

As you might have gathered, my first reaction when looking at this poster at a Yom Ha’atzmaut event, was incredulity and not a little frustration.

First off, I have a problem with the whole quest for authenticity that publicizers are on, such that “reality” is now some kind of ideological real estate (geddit?) that can be bought.

But more substantially, I found the image offensive. As if the very real issues of women and Haredim in Israel is the exact polar opposite of that which is presented in the media. As if there really is no such thing as a clash between the Western woman and the Haredi community. As if orthodox young girls dressed far more modestly than the blond in the picture were not being harrassed as the poster was being printed.

But then I looked again. Was the image really suggesting that all is perfect in Israel, or was it just suggesting things are a bit more complicated than the Bet Shemesh images?  I know that there is a Haredi community near Sheinkin, a trendy area of Tel Aviv. Is there no possibility that one might catch sight of a woman like this with a Haredi in the background? Besides, the Haredi guy in the photo has his back to her – he may not even have seen her. That’s something that can happen all over Israel.

Looking even closer, I’m guessing the photo was taken in Tzfat. The woman has a shawl draped over her shoulders for modesty’s sake, and I’m not sure if she’s looking happy about that. Those folded arms could suggest frustration. In short, at a second glance it isn’t clear whether this is a celebratory image at all. We have a woman having to cover herself up, and a Haredi man with his back to her, perhaps trying to ignore her presence. It’s an image that is far more ambivalent than my initial glance assumed. (Thanks to Guy Gelbart, who put up the poster at his Israel Fest event in Tucson, for pointing this out!)

That evening I came across another fantastic shot by Alex Livak. Another authentic juxtaposition of a Haredi man leaning almost longingly against a billboard of a distinctly non-Haredi chap.

Well if Livak can capture an image like this, another  image that somewhat gives the lie to the “Iran” comparisons after the Bet Shemesh furore, why can’t the guys at the Yom Ha’atzmaut event do the same?

I think the difference is the words. 

For some reason, the words printed on the image have a hasbaratic insistence, to which I am now thoroughly allergic – irrespective of their message. I automatically assumed that a call to “see the real Israel” was a demand to jump from one polar opposite (media critique) to another polar opposite (all is perfect in Israel). Yet the phrase “See the real Israel” doesn’t have to be interpreted as such a nuance-less invitation. 

Is this just my own idiosyncratic allergy? Did you share my initial reading of the poster’s intention? 

I wonder whether – if the words had been placed on a separate poster, next to the image standing on its own – this might have had a more liberating effect?

Related posts:

1. Media’s role in shaping our image of Israel
2. The Song for our Troubled Times?
3. Are we losing Jerusalem?

My wonderful daughter had her Bat Mitzvah recently. She sang beautifully from the Torah, built an amazing model of her “Personal Tabernacle” inspired by the portion, and took part in a lovely service she had helped to shape.

I am overjoyed that my daughter’s experience of Judaism has been of a wise and deep tradition, fantastic stories, warm Friday nights, and inclusivity for both genders.

It wasn’t until we went with her to an exhibition on Jewish Feminist art at Ein Harod Museum that we came across a different aspect of Judaism. We walked around an exhibition created by furious female artists. Laws of niddah, modesty, and exclusion were beautifully screamed at, ridiculed, and mourned through video, photography, installation, sculpture and embroidery. From the wedding dress decorated with the hair shorn from the bride, to the photo of the disembodied hand holding a JNF box thrust through the curtain of the women’s section, there was some strong and strikingly painful work there.

Yet although my daughter must be the most Jewishly knowledgeable of all her friends, I needed to explain every single reference to her. She had had literally no idea of how aspects of Jewish tradition can be cruel to or disdainful of women.

This is because we had never taught her about them, and she’d never come across them until this exhibition. We knew instinctively that if we had exposed her to the anti-feminist narrative of Judaism at an early age she would have emerged knowledgeable about yet emotionally distant from Judaism. We didn’t want that for our kid.

I’m left reflecting on these ideological choices when addressing the topic of our panel: “How do we talk to our children about Israel?” Because you see the thing is that my wife and I have absolutely no regrets at constructing “rose-tinted spectacles” for our child’s experience of Judaism. Our choice to induct our daughter into Judaism was not related to the moral rights or wrongs of the entirety of the tradition. We wanted for Judaism to be a part of who she is.

I believe we need to take the same choices with our young children with regards Israel. Prior to and irrespective of our attitudes to Israeli policies and politics, we need to make an ideological choice. Is Israel important to a Jew, or not?

My belief is that the only reason there are so many Jews at J-Street conference, and at work for J-Street throughout the country, is because they believe Israel is important to them as Jews.

We are all busy people, we all have limited free time on our hands, and – let’s face it – quantitatively strategically and even morally there are far more important and horrific things going on throughout the world for us to get worked up about. We get worked up about Israel because it is important to us. Just as much as we wish no wrong to be done to Palestinians, and just as much as we wish no wrong to be done to Israelis, we also wish that Israel behave justly because Israel is part of us.

But as you yourselves at J Street can attest, growing up with a deep connection to Israel does not have to lead one to love everything about Israel. The fact that my kid was not just surprised but also horrified by much of what she learned at the Jewish Feminist exhibition shows that one can be brought up to identify with a tradition, a people, a place, and still continue to develop a moral stance that might be at odds with elements of that tradition.

Bringing up our children to “love Israel” should not mean we are brainwashing them or serving evil reactionary interests. Sometimes I fear that too much superficial education has given love and commitment a bad name. A knee-jerk rejection of “teaching to love Israel” is – I would suggest – mainly a response to the extent to which such a concept has been shorn of its depth. Love is crucial, but it’s not simple.

We need our children to be knowledgeable and wise enough to be able to question what they have received, and at the same time we need them connected enough to care. 

What would an education look like that seeks to establish a commitment that is strong and passionate but not blind or paralyzed? How might we cultivate the roots of critical loyalty in our young?

We at Makom would advocate for two approaches. We would take care to give pre-teens what we might call the “philosophical training” for them to embrace complexity, and we would give them a framework of “spiraling questions”.

Embracing Complexity

Rather than simplifying issues for a little kid to grasp, we should encourage them to grapple with the complexities of simple situations. For example, at the age of five, issues of “Hugging and Wrestling with Israel” are tough! But questions such as “has your best friend ever done something you thought was the wrong thing to do?” fit right in to their lives. Follow up questions can go further: Did you tell your friend they had done wrong? Did you tell them in private or in public? Are you still friends despite the wrong-doing?

Rather offering a simplistic explanation of Israel’s Separation Barrier, we might ask where there are fences in our children’s lives? (House? School?) What are the advantages and disadvantages of fences? Do good fences make good neighbors or deepen divides? Who decides where to put a fence, and why? (Our “Car Pool Conversations” about Israel are freely downloadable )

These are the kinds of conversations that can help our kids develop a familiarity with complex moral issues, and build a suitable vocabulary to begin to address them when they arise. In this way our children learn that complexity and “messiness” (Israeli characteristics if ever there were!) can be fascinating and not frightening.

Spiraling questions

At Makom we would suggest that the moral and political issues of Israel emerge from four key values expressed in the Hatikvah anthem: To Be A Free (Jewish) People In Our Land.

What does it mean and what does it take to survive (To Be)? What does it mean and what does it take to be free? What does it mean and what does it take to be connected to the Jewish People? And what does it mean and what does it take to be In Our Land? These four questions underlie every headline we ever read about Israel, and they are four questions that we can ask and explore at every age.

As little kids our questions about being Jewish and connected to other Jews will yield different answers from those we may reach today. Likewise the expansion of our understanding of freedom – its limitations and responsibilities – will grow with the years. But the more we empower our children to engage with these four “pillars of Zionism”, the more we enable them to connect to, critique, and affirm Israel at every stage of their lives.

All the above opinions have been developed and inspired by my work with Makom, and consultations with Dr Jen Glaser who first introduced me to the teachings of Vygotsky.

Related posts:

1. Israel’s US Ambassador declines J-Street invitation
2. Encouraging not scoffing
3. The Eighth Jewish Child – for Caryl Churchill

• Fact: the Haredi population in Israel is doubling every decade.
• Fact: Over 20% of school children in Israel are at Haredi institutions, which teach neither English nor Math, let alone Citizenship.
• Fact: Over 60,000 young Haredi men are granted automatic exemption from army service every year, under 50% of all Haredi adults work, and those that do so work fewer hours than anyone else in the country.
• Fact: Over 90 “Mehadrin” bus lines throughout the country require women to sit at the back of the bus.

When Makom was faced with the challenge of creating and running a 5-hour symposium on “Haredim and the Jewish Collective” for the Global Jewish Forum of the Jewish Agency, we wanted to avoid throwing oil on the already blazing fire.

We also wanted to bring all the participants into a deeper more honest and informed understanding of the situation. For example, all the above facts are most certainly the presenting edge of the issue, but they risk offering a snap-shot as a trend, a two-dimensional picture as the deep reality. How might we help everyone reach, as Yonatan Ariel puts it, “a higher level of confusion”?

Add to that a mostly non-Haredi audience carrying a little bit of natural prejudice, a smidgen of hurt pride, and a genuine concern that Israel may not end up looking anything like a Western paradise, and we knew to expect a loaded atmosphere for the latest Global Jewish Forum.

We are not experts about Haredim, but we knew something about our approach to Israel education, and we chose to stick with the five principles we knew.

1. Elephants in the Room.

Israel is too important to the Jewish People, and Jewish adults are too intelligent and invested for us to avoid the burning and even painful issues. Careful honesty is more important than breezy avoidance.

2. Local perspectives.

Every community has its own assumptions, its own associations, and its own concerns that must be acknowledged and worked with. Some values are more culturally-specific and less universal than we are aware.

3. Multi-vocality.

We needed to bring many different voices into the room. Not a case of them and us, but a case of them and them and also them and us and us and us. We are a deep complicated People with many shades of opinions and stances, and that is what makes us fascinating.

4. A Jewish conversation.

When studying Israel with Jews, Israel’s issues, challenges, and achievements must be addressed through the lens of Jewish civilization. Hence we took care to frame the day’s forum in the 200-year perspective of the challenges that modernity presented to the Jewish world, and made sure the accompanying source pack referred not just to Israeli sociology but also to Jewish history.

5. Bettering not battering.

We do not advocate for prettifying or cover-ups. Critique is a crucial part of learning. But we do insist on an intention of repair rather than just moaning.

Elephants in the Room

The elephants in the room tend to be different from the subject everyone is talking about. Everyone has been talking about the violence in Bet Shemesh and the extreme responses to women sitting in “Mehadrin” buses. Yet scratching at the surface of these deeply troubling events revealed an easy truth: These headline-grabbing events are not particularly complex. What can one do with a violent person or someone who brazenly breaks the law? Arrest them!

The more complex question lies below: What if all violent Haredim (acknowledged by all to be a minority) were arrested? What if every single Haredi who spat at a child, set fire to a garbage can, screamed in a woman’s face, was removed from society? Would this solve the issue of the remaining 800,000 or so Haredim in Israeli society? Would this overnight fill the army to bursting with Haredi recruits? Would this miraculously give Haredi men qualifications and the desire to take a job? And these jobs – are they just waiting to be filled?

In short, the elephants in the room tend to be hidden by the headlines. Other questions must be brought forward and addressed: Do we want Haredi integration into Israeli society, or do we prefer them separate? What do we mean by “integration” – which side should make compromises to enable such integration? Do Haredim seek integration? Do we wish to achieve this aim through a radical or gradual process? These were the kind of issues we decided to try to tackle in the Global Jewish Forum.

Local Perspectives

The dominant Israeli perception of the Haredi “problem” is primarily economic. It is about “sharing the burden”. Something along the lines of: They can dress how they want, so long as they serve in the army, work for their keep, and educate their children for sustainability. Hence reassurance for an Israeli would be to hear that more and more Haredim are entering the workplace, are serving in the army, are teaching their children for the 21st Century.

Yet the dominant Diaspora perspective of the Haredi “problem” is altogether different. It is primarily about the exclusion of women: “Women within the Haredi community are practically enslaved in the home, and Haredi men will not be happy until every woman in Israel is covered up and out of sight.” For an American to be reassured, they would like to hear that the rights of 50% of the Jewish People are being protected and upheld.

This is why Israeli reassurances about “progress” are often met with such ambivalence in the Diaspora. “What does Haredi men working in hi-tech have to do with women’s place in society? It would seem that the way to integrate Haredi men into the army and workplace is to exclude women from it! In what way is this progress?” Likewise the Diasporan suggestion of trumpeting women’s rights would only cause the Haredim to close ranks and avoid integration – no solution at all for the Israeli.

These two opposing prisms through which we look at the same issue (or indeed the same prism through which we look from opposing sides) needed to be made explicit. They were addressed very clearly and in two different ways by the two women in the interviews video.

We should also point out that most Jews in the West might assume that the integration of Haredim into Israeli society is desirable, while many Israelis – Haredim and non-Haredim – do not share this basic assumption and even aspire to more separation.

Multi-vocality

We needed participants to hear from Haredim. But how? Most Haredim who are in any way representative of their communities will have been educated in the Israeli Haredi education system and so do not speak English. Simultaneous translation systems are technically possible, but are, in our experience, always more distancing than engaging.

How many Haredim should we bring in? We envisaged two or three Haredim defending themselves against the accusations of over a hundred liberal American Jews… not particularly constructive… A panel of speakers? But we would insist on having some women on the panel, and what if that were to rule out the participation of the Haredi men? Besides, panel discussions are so rarely enriching.

In the end we chose a different genre. We interviewed six different people, edited them down into about 5 minutes each, and added subtitles in English. Men, women, Haredim, non-Haredim, in favour of integration and against, advocating for radical and gradual change. The Forum would watch the 30 minute video, and then discuss what they had seen in their small groups.

Which led us to our next issue: who would be in the groups? Surely multi-vocality on this topic would require many different voices in the small group discussions as well as from the screen? Yet there are no Haredim in the Jewish Agency Board of Governors, or in positions of power in Jewish Federations. In order to have Haredim at the tables, we would need to go out of our way to invite them.

The Jewish Agency works with Haredim – through its Youth Futures project, and Partnership Together network. Thanks to a huge amount of effort on the part of these units, including the provision of transport, glatt kosher meals, and much liaison, we knew we would be able to ensure the participation of Haredim at each discussion table.

But, we were asked by one of their representatives, would there be an option for men and women to sit separately? Would there, for example, be a table set aside for women only?

We tried hard to imagine this. A conversation about Haredim and Israeli society without the men hearing the women or the women hearing the men? We couldn’t do it. We refused. But we could, we reasoned, accept the idea of men and women sitting at the same table, but with men sitting on one side of the table and women on the other side. Then all are part of the same conversation, no one is excluded, but the seating is still separate.

This idea lasted until we raised it with the facilitators of the table discussions. They quite rightly pointed out that were we to introduce this seating arrangement at the start of the day, to over 250 people deeply concerned about a “Haredi take-over”, the Forum would break down then and there. Only a long serious and reasoned conversation would lead everyone to accept this suggestion, and we didn’t have time for that.

The final arrangement was simply for each facilitator to discretely ensure that each Haredi table member be sandwiched by someone of the same gender. We survived. Haredim were active and crucial participants in the small-group discussions throughout the conference. Did the seating arrangements rule out the participation of some whose voices might have sounded different? Perhaps.

Bettering not Battering

One might say that there are two schools of thought on the Haredi issue: The Neri Horowitz approach, and the Dan Ben David approach. Both are serious researchers. Yet we began to realize they almost represent a Hillel–Shammai divide of old.

Dan Ben David sees doom ahead. He will point out, for example, that 45% of Israel’s children are educated in the Haredi and the Arab sector. This is a third-world education at best. Israel will not be able to maintain a first-world army when such a large proportion of its citizens have received a third-world education. In marrying together security, existential fears, and Haredim, Dr Ben David is absolutely right. But perhaps a little bleak, shall we say.

Contrast this with the Hillel of Neri Horowitz, adviser to Admors and to Ministers. He is a walking encyclopedia on Haredi issues, and celebrates the huge steps made by the government and the Haredi community towards integration. He prefers to advocate for a policy of “internal aliya” – an investment in the absorption of Haredim into Israeli society requiring similar educational, social, and economic strategies to those of welcoming a wave of immigration. He doesn’t deny the challenges, but chooses to trust a process rather than force a confrontation. He also is absolutely right, while possibly a little optimistic.

We invited Neri to address our conference. We chose a little bit too much light rather than a little bit too much darkness.

But more than this, some of the Haredim we chose to “showcase” in our film were people working towards peaceful and practical solutions. The jewel in the crown was Rabbi Yehuda Meshi Zahav. This is a man who has shifted from being the leader of an extreme (and often violent) Haredi sect, to being the founder director of ZAKA. ZAKA is an internationally acclaimed volunteer organization that focuses on “respecting the dead, and saving life.” It’s a Jewish Red Cross. They treat everyone, and welcome everyone: They even sent a team of Haredi volunteers around the country to teach resuscitation to Arab women.

The initial response to our choice of featuring ZAKA and its director, was to shrug: “That’s easy,” we were told, “but how representative is Meshi Zahav of the Haredi mind-set?” The assumption was that ZAKA is something of a freak of nature, an exception that proves the rule. To give prominence to such an organization would be just as misleading as to present Neturei Karta as evidence of most Jews’ anti-Zionism, or a mild-mannered Persian proving that Iran’s nuclear plans are peaceful.

But on the other hand, ZAKA is a picture of the possible, and it is a success story. Is the utopian vision of integrated tikkun olam that Meshi Zahav propounds more likely to succeed than the strategy of homogenous Haredi cities enacted by the Mayor of Betar Illit (who also features in our video)? No one really knows. But we knew that in the careful educational dance between clear-eyed critique and a call to action we needed to weight the scales away from despair and in the direction of hope.

As Yonatan Ariel, Executive Director of Makom, emphasized at the end of the Forum: We must give weight to the power of human agency. Nothing is fixed. After the Holocaust 80% of Yeshiva students had been wiped out by the Nazis and over 90% of all Rabbis murdered. Thanks to the huge efforts of the Haredi community and the Jewish State, the world of Yeshiva has been revived. If such an extraordinary recovery is possible not through miracles but through human agency, so too may we fix the unhealthy by-products of such a recovery through our own choices and actions.

The full program can be seen here

Related posts:

1. Global Jewish Forum on Haredim and the Jewish Collective
2. Global Jewish Forum Feb 2012 – Program
3. Global Jewish Forum – Haredim

I’m a great fan of Tamar Eisenman’s artistry, and of Asaf Avidan’s surreality, but what can I tell you – I’m an old-school Zionist. I’m big on our developing and Israeli-Jewish culture in Hebrew. You don’t need to – even I call me old-fashioned. I kind of think that if we can’t even create our own renewal of Jewish culture here in the Holy Land, then really what are we doing here?

But just now a great song came out by an Israeli woman who writes and performs in English. This one made it past my usual barriers. It’s one of those rare Israeli songs that while escaping the particularity of Hebrew, doesn’t feel the need to escape Israel and her issues.

The chorus is a powerful mix of rocked-up folk with a Cranberries-crack, and evokes the powerful image of the Carmel Forest up in smoke:

My country’s burning
Smoke is rising
You can see it rise from miles away
Driving by the flames
I pray
For rain 
I pray for sanctuary

The singer songwriter comes from my neck of the woods, and we could indeed see the smoke rising from miles away. It was an awful sight.

Along with the tears shed for the destruction and the deaths of so many brave people, there was a lingering frustration following the Carmel fire. An excruciating video went around, showing Labor Party leader Shelly Yachimovitch in the Knesset warning in 2009 that in pushing Israel’s firefighters towards privatization by drying up their public funding, the Finance Ministry was almost asking for a disaster to occur. It occurred.

It wasn’t until listening to the song by Ella Vs Mountain that I saw the connection between the Carmel Fire and the Israel’s summer protests for Social Justice. If ever we had required non-partisan confirmation that the State was not doing its job properly, the devastation of such a a beloved part of the country mostly due to poor preparation and chronic underfunding gave it to us. Maybe this was the fire that Ella recognizes burning under the protest movement.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But the video clip of the song does more than talk Israel. It cuts together images of popular protests throughout the world, so that the fire falls back into symbolism and the protests that gripped Israel become part of a global wave. Though the youtube cuts mostly show images from Israel (there are even a few rioting Haredim in there) they are also taken from the US, Europe, China, and throughout the Middle East. On the youtube page they even give links for all the clips they used.

The message of the video is clear: the local is global. Israelis in the streets were marching with the world, as part of the world, in order to address an issue for the world. It’s a bold – and mostly true – statement.

It’s a no-brainer to suggest that the general aims (and some methods) of the Occupy movement share a great deal with the Social Justice tent encampments of Israel, although I reckon Occupy could learn something from the Israelis about inclusivity. One can also see how the call for a more representative application of state power shares much with the protests in the Arab world. Though in Israel the protests were met with far less violence (and far less success?).

The video led me to think about what is going on in Tunisia, pretty much the only place in the Arab world where protesters were not beaten or shot at. The New York Times now points to a more complex issue that the Tunisians are dealing with: The tensions between religion and democracy.  

Ring a bell?

A TV director chose to air a film that upset religious Muslims, and he’s since been beaten up and taken to court for libeling religion and possibly harming “public order or good morals”.

“Certain Islamist factions want to turn identity into their Trojan horse,” Mr. Messaoudi said. “They use the pretext of protecting their identity as a way to crush what we have achieved as a Tunisian society. They want to crush the pillars of civil society.”

In describing a Tunisian issue, he uses almost exactly the kind of words one hears in Israel today with regards the fundamental religious encroachment on public life.

The article refers to Turkey by way of comparison, but so much of what it describes could as easily be applied to Israel. Check this out:

secular elites long considered themselves a majority and were treated as such by the state. In both, those elites now recognize themselves as minorities and are often mobilized more by the threat than the reality of religious intolerance.

Hello?

Not only that, but it seems that in Tunisia at least, the founding democratic government is keen to avoid making any bold decisions. Compromises will be made, rulings will be postponed, just as they have been in Israel for decades.

The spokesperson from the ruling party’s political bureau admitted that

the line between freedom of expression and religious sensitivity would not be drawn soon. “The struggle is philosophical,” he said, “and it will go on and on and on.”

And in a strange way I’m left hopeful. In a bizarrely Zionist way I’m proud that here in Israel we’re no longer dealing with the esoteric.

The tensions between religion and state are now no longer just a Jewish meshuggas – they’re international (dare we say “universal”) issues that we’re trying to tackle.

Likewise the Social Justice protests were nothing if not local – after all, no one bailed out failing banks in Israel. But we shared a shout, we called a call in common with the rest of the world.

In that way I guess it makes sense for Ella to sing her song of protest in English and not in Hebrew. Sometimes Israel isn’t a separate case – it’s part of the whole.

Related posts:

1. Kobi Oz in Toronto, Part I
2. Kobi Oz in Toronto, Part II
3. Kobi Oz in Toronto, Part III

As the UK’s Jewish Chronicle uncovers incident after incident of Jewish individuals and organisations ‘fraternizing with the enemy’, the mutterings in opposition to its stance grow louder and louder. You can almost see the two sides drawing their swords, shaping up for battle, determined to prove at all costs the objective truth of their position.

I don’t think this is going to end well.

Perhaps, fundamentally, the issue is about the extent to which we view the world with suspicion or trust.

It is undoubtedly possible to regard the organisation London Citizens with suspicion – there are, apparently, individuals involved who have said appalling things about Israel, and who have been associated with others who have said and advocated even worse.

It is equally, if not even more possible to view the East London Mosque with suspicion – preachers expressing sentiments that are abhorrent to many within the Jewish community are clearly given a platform there.

However, London Citizens is not defined by extremist Islamists. Indeed, the vast majority of people who are involved have never spoken about Israel or Jews, and are more than happy to engage in dialogue with members of our community both for its own sake and for the benefit of the people of London. They are open to learning about Judaism and Jewish life, and interested to hear about our range of opinions about Israel. There is no reason to be suspicious of them, and every reason to trust.

The East London Mosque is a more complex case, but even there, it is simply wrong to stereotype. We should be aware, for example, that construction work taking place at the mosque was stopped on Rosh Hashanaand Yom Kippur so as not to disturb Jewish worshippers at the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue, which backs onto it. Indeed, there are both members and trustees of the mosque who are genuinely open to engagement with Jews, and welcome the opportunity to do so; they are willing to listen to Jewish perspectives, and appreciate the chance to discuss Israel. In the course of discussion, we may not always agree, but we may come closer to an appreciation and understanding of one another’s narratives, and, in this way, add an important human dimension to what is so often a fractious and damaging political debate.

On the spectrum of suspicion and trust, the Jewish Chronicle seems to sit closest to the suspicion end. They are not wrong to choose to sit there; certainly there is much about which to be suspicious, and there are genuine dangers lurking for Jews which we would be naive and foolish to ignore. However, the questions are: to what extent should we allow that suspicion to cloud all of our interactions with others? To what extent should we feel compelled to do our due diligence on everyone and anyone, just in case they may have associated with an unsavoury individual at some point in the past? To what extent should we assume the worst about people until they prove to us the opposite? In short, how suspicious do we really need to be?

One reading of our recent past would argue we should be highly suspicious. It would point to the Shoah, Arab states’ history of seeking to delegitimize and destroy Israel, two Palestinian intifadas, 9/11, 7/7 and Iran’s determined efforts to secure nuclear weapons, and conclude that we have no choice but to be. However, an alternative reading of our recent past would highlight the facts that we live at a time in which an All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism exists and has published a ground-breaking and highly influential report on the issue, a high profile Holocaust denial trial has been fought and won, Holocaust Memorial Day has become part of the UK’s annual calendar, learning about the Holocaust has become an established part of the national curriculum, and a controversial decision to provide a platform for the leader of the BNP on the popular TV programme Question Time, resulted in him being ridiculed and humiliated.

Viewed from a historical perspective, ours is almost certainly the most accepted and socially-integrated generation in all of Jewish history.

It is possible, indeed it is entirely legitimate, to read our contemporary circumstances in this way, and to situate ourselves on the ‘trust’ side of the spectrum. That is the side that Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg naturally leans towards – perhaps even feels compelled to lean towards – and I love him for it. It is what allows him to continually invite people into his home, to constantly reach out to those in need both within and beyond his community, and to actively seek out opportunities to engage across political and religious divides.

It is what drove him to write to the Chairman of an Orthodox synagogue in his neighbourhood at a time of particular difficulty and sadness within that community, simply to say he was thinking of them. It is what spurred him on during his recent fundraising walk from Frankfurt to London (yes – you read that right – he walked), when he stopped off numerous times on his journey to meet with Christian leaders to discuss with them, in impeccable German, how to heal the centuries-old rifts in Christian-Jewish and German-Jewish relations.

It’s why he recently wrote to Stephen Lawrence‘s parents, Doreen and Neville, to let them know that there are people within the Jewish community who feel their pain, and support and respect the tremendous courage and dignity they have shown in their pursuit of justice. And it’s what motivates him to be part of London Citizens. It provides a framework for him to genuinely engage with others many of us rarely bother to meet – people from different socio-economic backgrounds, people from different ethnic backgrounds, and yes, even the odd Moslem or two.

In each and every one of these instances, there was a possibility that his good intentions may have been spurned or used, and no doubt they have been on several occasions, but how much poorer would our community, indeed our world be, without his profound belief in the good of humankind? If that makes him a “useful idiot,” I aspire to such useful idiocy.

Trust and suspicion are both human imperatives; they are not either/ors. Ultimately, a balance appropriate to the circumstances needs to be struck between them. The wholly suspicious individual values safety above everything, and therefore never engages with anyone outside her closest circle for fear of what may happen, and remains eternally isolated. In her apprehension, she sees only the dangers of caricatures and stereotypes, and loses the opportunity to expand her horizons beyond her warm, all-embracing and protected shell.

In contrast, the wholly trustful individual values relationship above everything, and pursues those blindly despite the inherent risks, engaging with everyone and anyone in an on-going and possibly naive pursuit of redemption. In his openness, he sees just human beings, and seeks to build bridges, even when those with whom he is trying to engage are simultaneously blowing those bridges up.

It is the rare individual who sits at the extremities of the spectrum, and none of the characters writing, or being written about in the Jewish Chronicle situate themselves there; they, and most of us, are more than aware of the foolishness of doing so.

But each of us must find our place on that truth/suspicion spectrum; each of us must determine how we are to balance these two imperatives of human existence. And if we find ourselves leaning in one direction or the other, we should listen carefully to the voices on the other side.

As my teacher and friend Yonatan Ariel, Executive Director of Makom, said recently: “You will rob people of the richness of the educational grappling if you don’t bring a range of views to bear. There are idiots on the other side that disagree with you, but I promise you there are also smart people. And I promise you too there are idiots on your side, whatever your side is.”

As for me, fundamentally I choose to situate myself alongside the trusting and inspiring presence of Rabbi Wittenberg, whilst ensuring too that I read the editorial line of the Jewish Chronicle from time-to-time. I am no longer young enough to know whether that is the ‘right’ thing to do. But I don’t want to live in a world of suspicion, nor do I feel it is necessary to do so.

Whilst I fully acknowledge the importance of protecting the interests and security of the community, I don’t want my Judaism to be constantly on the defensive. It is possible to play the game by putting everyone behind the ball in defence, but it offers no guarantees and it severely hampers our chances of scoring any goals. And I want a goal-oriented Judaism that is committed to affecting change for the better, determined in its efforts to build a better world, dedicated in its pursuit of justice not just for Jews, but for all humanity. That, I’m afraid, involves taking some risks.

Perhaps the most important question facing the Jewish People today is whether or not we are courageous enough to do so?

No related posts.

We continually appease sectors of our overly partisan population by lighting small fires which we naively believe will harmlessly smolder on a low flame. We then forget about these fires and only wake up to them when they are raging, out of control, and then we raise our eyes to the skies and ask “how could this happen?”

Our most problematic issues of social engineering are not only due to our negligence, they are often products of our own creation.

We are shocked at the violent, lawless behavior of (a small minority) of religious settlers – having endorsed, even romanticized, the illegal methods their parents used in founding their settlements. We are frustrated at the inability of our Russian immigrants to integrate into “Israeli” society, having passed unprecedented legislation that creates the ability for Russian enclaves to remain isolated. We are angered by our Arabs citizens distaste for the Jewish State, having systematically disenfranchised them from an Israeli identity by choosing ethno-religious symbols instead of values, as the cornerstone of our national identity.

And here we are with a ballooning Haredi population, a growing minority of extremist radicals and a powerful majority for who Democracy, Zionism and Human Rights take second place, at best, to their Rabbis’ interpretations of Torah law. Many in Beit Shemesh have seen the writing on the wall since the influx of extreme Hasidim to the town; but this is something we have been aware of for much longer than we are currently giving credit to.

There have been radical anti-Zionist Hasidim in Israel from the inception of Zionism, long before the State. Even the Haredi tactics that we see today of mass protest, violent rhetoric, religious aestheticism and coercion of broader society originate in the 1930s, with Rabbi Amram Blau and the infamous Netura Karta.

The radical Haredim are not a new phenomenon, neither are the democracy-ambivalent majority who have also been part of our political landscape from the beginning. If anything, the problem has been the lack of change since our early attempts at appeasing this population.

We succeeded in creating a sterile, climate-controlled environment, in which the Haredi community could grow, radicalize, gain political power and move further right in their religiosity. This we perpetuated, through sanctifying a counterproductive status quo, and ultimately using it for our own partisan political success. And now Dr. Frankenstein is fearful of his own creation. Yet unlike the fictional scientist, Israeli society seems unaware of its hand in the Haredi problem and its ability to slowly reverse the trend.

There are three main areas in which we have facilitated the Haredi reality, all of which can be reversed as quickly as they have been established and taken hold. That is to say, slowly.

1. Social Isolation

Israeli society (along with Diaspora Jewish society) is often quick to point an accusatory finger at Haredi non-participation in the Israeli Defense Force. However the Haredi community is not acting illegally and the legal provision of Torato Umanato (Torah study as an occupation) – the brainchild of Ben-Gurion -was an acceptable policy when it affected a few hundred young men a year, rather than the current tens of thousands.

Although this is the most visible case of social isolation, no less important is the tacit agreement by the Education Ministry not to regulate Haredi schools and allow them to jettison the secular requirements, this contributes to an isolation from Israeli values and ultimately the inability, in the rare case of there being a desire, to enter the modern workplace.

Lastly, there is a legal autonomy in many Haredi neighborhoods, which distances police, social workers and courts from the make-up of their communities.

2. Dominion of Religious Affairs

Secular Israel long ago handed the Haredim the keys to religious Judaism. Countless Hiloni (secular) Jews despair about the religious standards coerced upon them when marrying, yet being the majority in a democratic country, if they had a viable alternative it could be changed. The Haredi grip over the definition of Jewish religious practice in the State has been strengthened by Hiloni apathy. It has also led the Haredim to justify their worldview of being the true saviors of Judaism.

3. Political power

While other commentators have suggested that Israeli governments are coerced by Haredi political power, this is not in fact the case.

We have built a political dependency on coalitions with Haredi parties, and there has not been a break for almost 40 years. As the Haredi parties care little for the majority of the issues of Statehood and are generally absorbed with their own sector, and religious issues, governments led by Labor and Likud have found that they can coexist easily with the Haredim and turn a blind eye to the troublesome side-effects.

The State of Israel was created through social engineering on a massive scale. It was bold, brave and sometimes brutal.

Ben-Gurion, who was the central engineer, was known to speak in first person plural when presenting successes and first person singular when discussing failures. Israeli society needs to own the failings which have led to our current Haredi troubles. “We” are to blame as much as “they” are. And together with some of the more liberal elements in their community we need to embark on correcting the mistakes we have made.

The writer is Makom’s Community Shaliach and Israel Engager in Greater Washington

Related posts:

1. Alick Isaacs – The Social Contract
2. Makom – An Overview
3. The Washington Connection

It’s strange how the most trivial thing brought me closest to violence.

I’m sitting on the train. The carriage is quiet. Four kids get on and sit across the aisle from me. They’re about 15 or 16. Well-equipped with their various mobile devices, they all loudly and boisterously turn to their respective video games. None of them have earphones.

One guy in particular is playing his beeping video game with the volume on full.

After putting in my noise-cancelling earphones and unsuccessfully trying to ignore him, I give in. I ask him, fairly nicely, to turn down the volume.

At first he doesn’t respond.

Then after I repeat my request he tells me to wait until he finishes the game. He is a little irritated that I distracted him. Blood rising to my cheeks I ask him again, less nicely.

His giggling mates guffaw as the kid tells me that I ought to be more patient.

I want to kill him.

Even more frustrating is the ticket inspector who is sitting only a few seats away. He does nothing. In the end – oh the shame! – I respond in kind. I unplug my earphones from my computer and turn my own volume up.

Only then does the inspector get up and tell us both to turn the volume down.

I breathe again.

A few days later, and I’m in even more of a state. I’ve just read that the Railway Authority has refused a request for announcements to be made in Arabic as well as Hebrew. Arabic is one of Israel’s official languages. It is spoken by a significant proportion of Israel’s citizens, and the train stops at several cities with a large Arab population – Lod, Ramle, Acco, Haifa.

But no announcements are made in Arabic.

They are made in Hebrew and, quite often, in English.

Here’s the kicker. What is the reason Israel’s Rail Authority will not make announcements in Arabic?

Because it would make the announcements too long, and, wait for it – “it would make the train ride noisy.”

Noisy.

Were I only concerned with my decibellian comfort, I’d laugh bitter tears. But these days I’m reading a lot of Avishai Margalit. He is the wise man who suggested we let go of lofty aspirations to a Just Society, and aim for the more modest goal of creating a Decent Society. A decent society, according to Margalit’s famous encapsulation, is a society that refrains from humiliating its citizens.

This decision, this deliberate decision not to make announcements in Arabic is humiliating. It humiliates Arab citizens of Israel. It’s especially humiliating because it’s so trivial. It’s not about changing the words of Hatikvah, it’s not about the Nakba, and it’s certainly not about the Occupation. A compromise would have cost nothing. Instead, it’s another little humiliation for Arab Israelis.

What does one do with such feelings of humiliation?

I know that when that kid refused to mute his stupid game, my fury and fantasy of violence emerged from a feeling of helplessness and the inexplicable humiliation of having my humanity disrespected. I was humiliated. In particular by the way in which the ‘system’, ie the representative of Israel’s Rail Authority, was so loath to intervene.

It was almost as if he didn’t care about the noise.

Related posts:

1. Humiliation of the Turkish Ambassador
2. Banishing the Darkness
3. Turn to the Right

The problem with this approach lies in the assumption that students will simply get it if educators teach them the value of and the textual basis for the ties that bind the Jewish people. However, engendering an organic ‘group connection’ is not a didactic exercise but rather a highly internalized understanding built out of layered relationships and experiences.

As biblical commentator Aviva Zornberg puts it,”our sense of person is registered in wordless and diffuse ways, in body knowledge, in relationship. In other words, we develop who we are before we think about it.” So, if teaching about Jewish Peoplehood can only serve to provide a knowledge base, how can local educators enable young people to build this connection?

This article aims to highlight a program that offers a new paradigm for Jewish Peoplehood engagement locally in North America. Over the past five years I have been involved with and observed a small program grow in Toronto. The program, funded by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and the Jewish Agency for Israel, began as a capacity building exercise to strengthen synagogues by providing them with pre-army Israeli youth to run informal Jewish and Israel programming on a shared cost basis.

The UJA MAKOM Young Emissary Program in Toronto grew from two young emissaries reaching three participating institutions, to fourteen reaching twenty-five institutions: day schools, synagogues, youth groups and summer camps, creating some of the strongest and most vibrant relationships between Federation and its agencies – and agencies with each other – that exist today.

Structurally, each pair of young emissaries that come for a year at a time works in a day school and synagogue, as informal Israel educators, with the year culminating in their taking on counsellor positions at one of several Jewish summer camps. The young emissaries are hosted by families associated with their host institutions and each live with three families throughout the year.

This program, seemingly a simple Federation-JAFI shaliach endeavour, offers a model for a new kind of Jewish Peoplehood education.

Two anecdotes by way of illustration: Carol is a high profile genetic researcher in a downtown Toronto hospital. She has been a strong supporter of Federation and particularly the program. When I asked her to tell me a powerful story about its impact she was caught off guard having never reflected formally on the question. Later she remarked to me casually, “Before I knew the young emissaries I had never shared my religion with people at work. Only after experiencing the constant Jewish pride of these remarkable young Israelis did I begin to tell my colleagues at work I was Jewish.”

Joanne has long been a supporter of Israel but offered to host a young emissary primarily because of her love of hosting (the year before she had housed a Korean overseas student). Her husband, Mike, has been less engaged with Israel and generally inactive in the community. While hosting a Young Emissary, Operation Cast Lead happens and Joanne and Mike discover together, up close and personal in their own home, that this is no regular hosting experience as their houseguest’s older brother is called up for reserve duty. It is out of the interconnectedness with Israel and its collective destiny, forged through an ongoing relationship with a young Israeli, that Joanne and her husband are moved to action: to visit Israel and join Gadna for a short period, volunteering in the IDF.

Upon reflection she remarked, “I had to do it, I couldn’t sit by; Dan’s family is our family; we could not stand by and let them do it alone.”

An average young emissary engages with over 250 students around Israel and Jewish identity matters on a weekly basis. This involvement includes creative programming which is integrated into the teacher’s lesson plans, recess activities, student council projects and class or school ceremonies and celebrations. Beyond these organized encounters, each young emissary touches informally another 200 young people weekly.

One Young Emissary remarked to me recently that on the day Gilad Schalit was released he was unable to walk down the school corridor, as he was veritably bombarded with students who wanted to share their joy, ask their questions and touch the real Israel in their lives.

From Fantasy to Reality In Essays in Love, Alain De Botton observes that moving from the fantasy of a relationship to its reality

is comparable to composing a symphony in one’s head and then hearing it played in a concert hall by a full orchestra. Though we are impressed to find so many of our impressions confirmed in performance we cannot help but notice details that are not quite as we intended them to be. Is one of the violinists not a little off key? Is the flute not a little late coming in? … As the fantasy is played out, the angelic beings who floated through consciousness reveal themselves as material beings, laden with their own mental and physical history.

On many levels the young emissaries help young people transform their fantasy relationships with Israel to real ones. This cross-cultural encounter is layered and complex. Young Emissaries are in some ways similar to young Jewish Canadians, but they are also profoundly different.

For the child in a host family, this is evident when she discovers that her host sister turns the tap off during the time she brushes her teeth – thereby sharing through behaviour how much water means in a little Middle Eastern country called Israel.

For the teens this difference is driven home by the compelling discovery that Hebrew lives beyond the Jewish text but also in Hebrew slang or good Israeli music, or more painfully, that graduation from high school in Toronto is contrasted in Israel with mandatory conscription to the IDF.

Young adults outside of Israel today are growing up aware of and increasingly uncomfortable about Israel’s complexity. One of the reasons for this is because, as students, they were rarely exposed to the real Israel, in all its vivid multi-dimensionality. When the live orchestra ends up not sounding like the one you dreamed of or were taught to imagine for so long, disappointment and frustration are inevitable.

Young emissaries, who embody Israel in their DNA, allow that complexity to be honest but at the same time, positive and compelling; they are true human resources.  

This encounter, as with any genuine inter-personal meeting, is two sided. Two anecdotes for illustration: Danielle, a Young Emissary, never had a bat mitzvah. As a secular Israeli, growing up in the centre of Israel, organized religion never really bore that much meaning for her. One evening, she heard a sheepish knock on her bedroom door. Her host sister popped her head into her room and asked, “it is my bat-mitzvah in two months, you’re my sister, will you read part of the parsha?”

Danielle learnt her section religiously on her i-pod nightly and, engaged through the process, discovered the will to, not only partake in her sister’s celebration, but have her own bat mitzvah as well.

Yuval recently completed his army service, and as with many Israeli soldiers, the release itself was anti-climactic. He shared that, on the day when he walked out of his base to hitch a ride home, which took a while, he felt uniquely alone. He thought to himself, in Israel I am just a regular soldier who has completed the army, but I know that there is a whole community outside of Israel for whom I was on the front line – for whom I am Israel – and who are proud of who I am.

There is an unexpected reciprocity that develops out of this program. Young Emissaries come to give but end up receiving a whole lot too and, as a result, so does the State of Israel. By the summer of 2012 there will be 44 Toronto-based young emissary alumni in Israel with new and unique understandings about the Jewish People, about Judaism and about human potential markedly different from their Israeli peers.

CEO and President of UJA Federation, Ted Sokolsky has observed this dual impact, noting that Federation is on the cutting edge of participating in the evolution of a new kind of Israeli; one who has had a powerful self-realizing experience outside of Israel, recognizes the Jewish potential of communities there and is committed to the Jewish People in the future, having internalized the notion of peoplehood through experience.

A formalized track for these returning emissaries to leverage this experience for the good of Israeli society has yet to be created but we may not be far off: recognition of the potential is already a big step. Indeed if, as Rabbi Nachman of Breslav wrote, the whole world is a very narrow bridge, then we should find the most profound ways to traverse it together.

Sarah Mali is the Director of Israel Engagement at the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

Related posts:

1. Understanding Jewish Peoplehood: Thinking and Doing
2. Jewish Peoplehood
3. Personal and Collective Jewish Identity