December 2006

Aharon Barak looks to his detractors and denies their charges that he is a “post-Zionist” with a powerful statement about his understanding of Zionism

It is important for me to state in this university that I am not a post-Zionist, but a Zionist with every fiber of my being…”I have my own story and that story is not a post-Zionist one. My story is a Zionist tale and it is a story of human dignity, of human rights. I learned a double lesson: one lesson is Zionism – the existence of the state of Israel. If we had had a country then, it (the Holocaust) would not have happened. Therefore this country is dear to me and imperative to me. The security of this country is as important to me as it is to all those Israelis who are more right-winged than I. The existence of this country is the key to the existence of the Jewish people. And therefore I am not a post-Zionist…But I have also learned another lesson: the Germans tried to turn out humanity to ashes. My top priority is to the rights of every human and the rights of every minority. The dignity of every man born under God is very very dear to me…The law is a part of our national security. I am very sorry but this is not post-Zionism. These two entities – the security of Israel on the one hand and human rights on the other - do not contradict each other in my opinion. Security can be maintained while ensuring human rights. Furthermore, ensuring human rights is part of security…A country that does not protect human rights risks its security, and a country that upholds human rights strengthens its security, this is the true Zionism.

The statement does little to explain though how a state can privilege the Jewish People yet see “to the rights of every human and the rights of every minority.” I wonder what Barak defines as rights? Maybe the Jewishness of the state can only come in areas that are not “rights,” and can therefore be denied to others. Meaning, rights to all, but not necessarily equality in all things. Is that what he means? Is that a moral vision of Zionism? Any lawyers out there?

So here I sit, flying to Israel, when the guy sitting next to me opens up his computer and starts surfing the internet! Oh man, when people did this ten years ago it was nothing quite like this. But the seats are still tiny and the flight is still really much longer than anyone can deal with in their right mind. One thing is for sure: Life will be a lot better in a couple hundred million years, when Pangea re-forms and you can drive from New York to Tel Aviv.

One of the things that makes me happiest about moving to Israel is the way my office celebrates Chanuka. Every day at around 5, we all go to the front desk and light candles together, followed by a little good-natured singing, sometimes some sufganiyot, and the occasional discussion about the holiday of Chanuka and it’s significance. One of my co-workers, who is fairly secular, went to a school assembly with his son. At the assembly, they had a Chanuka quiz. So the next day, he asked us the questions and was surprised to find out that most of us knew the answers. He, on the other hand, had only learned them from his son’s quiz the night before. In any case, I walk around grinning like an idiot after candlelighting, because it just makes me so happy.

On the other hand, today is Christmas and in Israel it more or less passes without fanfare. If I wasn’t so in touch with North America and didn’t read the Toronto Star and the Detroit Free Press online everyday, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. That, and the fact that my fiance is in America and has the day off from work. Poor Gila, she was complaining that she can’t go to work today, but has to use vacation days for chagim. Good thing she’s moving here in 34 days…

Daniel Septimus has thankfully capped the debate I was having with Douglas Rushkoff on Mixed Multitudes, one in which a lot of time was unfortunately spent on positioning and “you don’t practice what you preach” redress, and in capping that debate has re-opened a conversation on the heart of the matter which I hope will be productive. Here are the main points: Daniel writes,

I also lean toward the universalist approach — though I’d prefer to call it the messianic approach, i.e. the dream of redemption for all of humanity; I don’t really understand what’s good about community for the sake of community — without any higher mission

Whereas I write,

[O]ne’s dreams of messianic redemption often become another’s nightmares of cultural imposition; recognizing and encouraging strong communities which provide a safety net for community members, and respect the right of others from outside the community to determine their own destiny within their own dream of their future, creates a world in which each of God’s children can live up to their unique potential.

Please feel free to jump in either here or there–and let’s work out this problem of our time.

Jew Cindy Chupack publishes a piece in the New York Times describing her spur of the moment decision to celebrate this year’s Christmas with her husband. Commercialization works, she says, and she couldn’t resist buying a tree and creating a “winter wonderland” despite their Jewish background. At the end of the essay, in an attempt to give moral heft to what she admits is mainly a surrender to the Pottery Barn’s catalog, she writes, “every religion, every culture has so many beautiful rituals and traditions to choose from. Maybe celebrating is a step toward tolerating. I can hardly wait for Hanukkwanzaa.”

As you can see from that last sentence, it isn’t really clear what the redeeming, or new idea in this op ed is. What screams off the page though, is Ms. Chupack’s overwhelming need for something in her life that is religious, aesthetically pleasing (at the very least in a pop sense), and connected to a larger community that is happy and proud of its ritual. Hence this Jew bought Christmas hook line and sinker, with its sparkly glitter, smoking brand, and mass adherence, as opposed to Hannukah, which, in her opinion, sucks:

In my humble opinion, Jews have yet to make Hanukkah decorations beautiful, unless you consider a blue-and-white paper dreidel beautiful, but what can you expect from a holiday whose spelling is constantly up for debate.

Now, I’m actually quite proud that Hanukkah hasn’t reached the level of “beauty” that Christmas in America has (where spirituality and beauty have often become one and the same with the glitz constructed by ad agencies). But I’d suggest Ms. Chupack visit Israel during Hannukah for a very different experience and one that might just excite her inner Jew (or at least not disappoint her outer Christian). Here, she’ll find that there is literally no debate on how to spell the holiday’s name. She’ll also find a great deal of beauty in the fiery lights that each night chase away darkness in the form of Chanukiyyot by the thousands (she lights a “menorah,” but whatever) glittering in glass boxes on the front stoops and front walls of endless homes. The children are playing with real dreidel’s, (I’ve never seen the ugly paper ones that she describes), and the streets are packed with Israelis celebrating with ever increasingly complicated (and commercially savvy) sufganiyot. Every night there are endless parties, and the museum’s and public squares are decked out in Hannukah’s finest and holding regular events for the community.
This is what a holiday looks and feels like in the Jewish State, and an essay like this makes it so clear as to why Jews like Ms. Chupack, who is obviously sensitive and seeking, like the rest of us, should come and get a taste over here (I’ll buy the first sufganiyah!). These Jews just might find what they are looking for, and they won’t even have to disappoint their parents in the process.

Tonight, on the last night of Hannuka, let us join the AZM and remember the eight and final soldier that has been all but forgotten by much of the Jewish community–but his absence hurts all the same.

EIGHTH NIGHT: YEHUDA KATZ

On the eighth and final night, we recall Yehuda Katz, also captured in the battle of Sultan Yakoub (see “sixth night” and “fifth night.”) The son of Holocaust survivors Yosef and Sarah, Katz was a star pupil who spent all his days and nights in the Yeshiva beit midrash and dreamed of one day being a leading Judaic scholar and rabbinic figure.

May all of these soldiers return to within our borders, and may we never forget that real human beings have to put their own lives on the line so that we merit the ability to live in a world in which it has never been easy to live as a Jew. Hag Urim Sameah and Shabbat Shalom.

The Jewish People have come upon their own Hannuka moment, awaiting a re-dedication of our national purpose. As I write in the Forward,

Much like the events that led up to Hanukkah more than 2,000 years ago, a new empire has arisen in our time, stamping the known world with its particular brand of world-encompassing universal philosophy. Unlike the Greeks and the Hellenistic age, America’s brand of humanist universalism is truly a global phenomenon — spreading through nongovernmental organizations to the deepest reaches of the East, and through McDonald’s and Starbucks to create consumers in the farthest regions of the South.

And the Jewish people, one of the few peoples to maintain their cultural identity while witnessing the rise and inevitable fall of empires past, are in search of the next “big idea” to illuminate the path ahead and maintain communal cohesion in this new era. We have come upon our own Hanukkah moment, and yearn to light the menorah, but have yet to find the oil with which to do so.

Searches for the magical oil of the big idea appear everywhere. Before United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly this year, Los Angeles’s Jewish Journal published an entire issue dedicated to the next wave. In New York, the Coalition for Advancement of Jewish Education hosted a panel discussion where representatives of various religious streams and educational ideologies put forward their thoughts on how to reinvigorate the Jewish people, and the Jewish Week dedicated its annual Directions magazine to the “Next Big Thing” — where, full disclosure, my own idea is published. And in Israel, following David Grossman’s piercing observation that “there is no king in Israel,” new visions are sought and think tanks pop up like wildflowers on the Gilboa Mountain in the winter.

What we need aren’t just new ideas, but new paradigms: a whole new framework of dedication and obligation, to renew the old and re-focus our future.

Any ideas? Come blog for us on BoZ.

And even those darker nights to come.

Today we join the AZM in remebering Zvi Feldman:

SEVENTH NIGHT: ZVI FELDMAN

Our seventh candle is for Zvi Feldman, also captured in the battle of Sultan Yakoub (see “sixth night”) in 1982. At the time of his capture, he and his girlfriend were seriously considering marriage.

Feldman’s father fled Europe after his entire family was killed in the Holocaust. His mother was a Moroccan immigrant.

May he return to us, along with all of the other prisoners of Zion and Jerusalem.

The Jewish Week published its annual Directions issue–and this year it was focused on the “next big thing.” My contribution focused on the need for an activist’s bayit:

Taking into account the growing demand for innovative Jewish programming, recognizing the vast potential in Jewish creativity nestled among the hundreds of thousands of young Jews in New York City and taking advantage of the need of Jewish communal activists to find affordable housing, the New York Jewish community could deal a masterstroke by matching supply with demand in the greatest collective shidduch ever made this side of the Atlantic: the creation of a Jewish creative community cooperative, or, as some might call it, The Ken —Hebrew for “nest.”

Much like a nest, The Ken would shelter young Jewish communal activists as they develop new ideas and help those ideas take off. Like the most successful of Internet applications, The Ken would not be run in a top-down fashion, but would rather provide the resources and the creative freedom for those end users involved to make of it what they will based upon discretely set parameters. This open-source, do-it-together strategy would enable The Ken to tap into the great creative potential of my generation. But before it can do so, The Ken must provide offline those three main underlying factors that permit creativity online: hosting, social connectivity and empowering functionality.

The best thing about the project is that it could be a win-win: all we need is a sponsor to make the initial down payment, and those activists in the house could cover the mortgage with their rent. With time, either the initial investor could sell to the Ken for market value–or the investor could profit from the resale of the house.

So, who wants to invest in the Jewish future?

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