Editor’s Note: David Gordis is President Emeritus of Hebrew College where he served as President and Professor of Rabbinics for fifteen years. He is currently Visiting Senior Scholar at the University at Albany of the State University of New York. Here is the article he submitted to Tikkun. We publish it with the same sadness that Gordis expresses at the end of this article, because many of us at Tikkun magazine shared the same hopes he expresses below for an Israel that would make Jews proud by becoming an embodiment of what is best in Jewish tradition, history, and ethics, rather than a manifestation of all the psychological and spiritual damage that has been done to our people, which now acts as an oppressor to the Palestinian people. For those of us who continue to love Judaism and the wisdom of our Jewish culture and traditions, pointing out Israel’s current distortions gives us no pleasure, but only makes saddens us deeply. – Rabbi Michael Lerner (RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com)
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While reading Ethan Bronner’s review of a new biography of Abba Eban, I was reminded of a time when in a rare moment I had the better of a verbal encounter with Eban. It happened about thirty years ago at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which brought together leaders of American Jewish organizations, sometimes to hear from a visiting dignitary, in this case Eban, Israel’s eloquent voice for many years. I was attending as Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Committee. Eban had a sharp wit as well as a sharp tongue. He began his remarks with a mildly cynical remark: “I’m pleased, as always, to meet with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, though I wonder where the presidents of minor American Jewish organizations might be.” I piped up from the audience: “They are busy meeting with minor Israeli government officials.” A mild amused reaction followed and Eban proceeded with his remarks.
Looking back on Israel oriented meetings from those days, I attended a monthly meeting, alternating between Washington and New York, with my counterparts at the Anti-Defamation League, Nathan Perlmutter and the American Jewish Congress, Henry Siegman, along with Tom Dine of the America Israel Public Affairs Commission (AIPAC). Though the atmosphere was cordial, a clear fault line separated Perlmutter and Dine from Siegman and me. AIPAC and ADL were on the ideological and political right, particularly when it came to Israel, the American Jewish Congress was on the left and the American Jewish Committee straddled a centrist position, with its lay leadership tending center-right and its professional staff clearly center left. A policy adopted by all four public policy organization was honored inconsistently. The policy was: support whatever government was in power in Israel, right or left, and avoid criticism of its policies. This was honored when a right wing government was in power. However, the agreement dissolved when a left wing Labor government was in control because neither ADL nor AIPAC hesitated to criticize Labor government policies. At our meetings Dine and Perlmutter agreed that a Labor government in control in Israel was a problem for them. So it was Perlmutter and Dine on one side of the divide, and Siegman and me on the other.
Things have moved a long way since those days. The American Jewish Congress has disappeared from the stage. The current executive of the American Jewish Committee appears to aspire to fill the role of the retired ADL executive Abe Foxman as a leading spokesman for the ideological and political right. AIPAC’s support of the right wing in Israel and its alliance with the right wing in the United States is more palpable than ever. And of course, there has been no significant opposition to the entrenched Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is nearing a half century in duration. Netanyahu’s “facts on the ground” steps to make a two-state solution impossible are bearing fruit, and there still appears to be no significant opposition to these policies in Israel itself. A number of smaller organizations supporting a two-state solution have emerged, notably J-Street and Americans for Peace Now, but recent steps by the Israeli government to delegitimize these groups are proceeding. The bottom line as I see it: The right has triumphed; the left has been defeated.
The Israel of today is very far from anything I dreamed of and worked for throughout my career. I can clearly remember the day in 1948 when the State of Israel was established. I was in the fourth grade at the Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn. The entire school was summoned to the schoolyard in celebration of the momentous occasion. It was announced that from that day on the school would adopt the Sephardic (Israeli) Hebrew pronunciation and abandon the older European Ashkenazic. I well remember driving out with my parents to Idyllwild Airport, now JFK, to see the first airliner with the Israeli flag adorning its tail. This was a transformative moment. Jews had returned to the stage of history after the devastation of the Holocaust. Israel was to be the great laboratory for the rebirth of an ancient tradition in a new land and in a country committed to being a model of democracy and freedom for the world.
What happened? We can debate the reasons but the bottom line for me is that it has gone terribly wrong. On the positive side, Israel’s accomplishments have been remarkable. Israel has created a thriving economy, and has been a refuge for hundreds of thousands of the displaced and the needy. Israel has generated a rich and diverse cultural life and its scientific and educational achievements have been exemplary. In spite of these achievements, however, Israel in my view has gone astray. And it in in the area for which Israel was created, as a Jewish state, embodying and enhancing Jewish values that I see this failure. Throughout history, at its best, Jewish life and thought have successfully navigated between three pairs of values that are in tension with one another. First, the Jewish experience has balanced the rational with the affective, the assertion with the question, where often the question emerges as the more important. Second, it has embraced both particularism with universalism, probing Jewish interiorities but looking out to the larger world, recognizing the common humanity of all people. Third, it has shaped positions which looked to the past for sources and inspiration but at the same time projected a vision for a world transformed in the future into something better than its current reality.
Present day Israel has discarded the rational, the universal and the visionary. These values have been subordinated to a cruel and oppressive occupation, an emphatic materialism, severe inequalities rivaling the worst in the western world and distorted by a fanatic, obscurantist and fundamentalist religion which encourages the worst behaviors rather than the best.
And most depressing of all for me, is that I see no way out, no way forward which will reverse the current reality. Right wing control in Israel is stronger and more entrenched than ever. The establishment leadership in the American Jewish community is silent in the face of this dismal situation, and there are no recognizable trends that can move Israel out of this quagmire.So, sadly, after a life and career devoted to Jewish community and Israel, I conclude that in every important way Israel has failed to realize its promise for me. A noble experiment, but a failure.
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David Gordis has served as vice-president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (now American Jewish University). He also served as Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Committee and was the founding director of the Foundation for Masorti Judaism in Israel. He founded and directed the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies which became the National Center for Jewish Policy Studies.
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This must have been a most difficult and sad essay for you to write, Mr. Gordis
Israel, indeed, has failed to realize its promise, not only to you, but to those righteous people who had hoped that the Jewish People would finally realize their long dream to have their own country – particularly after their decades of time spent in a seeming endless diaspora and the unbelievable savagery of the Shoah.
There are others, I believe, who share your sorrow: Jewish-American immigrants who found a home in America but whose souls still reside in the land of their forefathers; Christians who acknowledge with love and pride their roots in Judaism; and all peoples of good will who respect the human rights of all peoples, in all nations, of our ever-shrinking world.
Thank you for this honest gift that you have presented in TIKKUN.
Almost 70 years later, Israel is not accepted as a legitimate neighbor in the Middle East by most Arab countries and continues to be under siege for its very existence. In the mean time, the neighbors around it are a human rights nightmare, While BDS focuses its wrath on Israel, acts of genocide are being ignored in Syria. Kumbaya
Manny, There will always be a country worse than Israel some where in the world. So therefore, there will never be any need to criticize it. Hitler was worse than Mussolini.
Israel is located on the Middle East. It has to deal with the neighbors it has been dealt. With the exception of Jordan and Egypt, no one ins the region has accepted Israel as a neighbor. Israel’s main advisories, Hamas and Hezbollah want to flush Israel into the sea and establish an oppressive Islamic state. If you want a picture f what it would look lie, juts peer into the human rights nightmare Hamas imposes on Gaza. Under current circumstances, with al Israel’s security issue, Israel s doing pretty well. Although most Israelis favor a 2 state solution, they rightfully fear what that would look like. From where your living, do you have any suggestions?
Manny, I wish I could believe that writing you would make any difference in creating balance in your views about the reality of Israel, but any way here it goes; you seem to believe that if there is more than one bully in the neighborhood, then bullying is OK and allowed, but the thing is, we need just to watch for who’s the biggest Bully? That sounds like a great healthy way of thinking! Just to defend Israel blatant crimes! What did our world come to?!!
I feel sad for you. Almost 70 years and the only thing tat is blocking your team of having a neighboring state is your people’s own intransigence.
The reality of Israel is that there have always been people of reason willing to work with the Arab world and the Palestinians. That does not translate into surrendering sovereignty. Palestinian intransigence has driven Israelis to the right. Arafat had a golden opportunity to get his Palestinian state and he walked away form it and opted to allow for Israeli civilians to be blown up.
Israel is not a state behind acts of genocide in any shape or form. It is not close to being guilty off the hideous crimes committed in the Arab world in the past and in the present.
Wake up and clean your act up.
Dear Alice, Where did the Palestinian fall in your comment? Do they have any room in the right to their home land and in the right to freedom and happiness as all humans you said? Are they included but you forgot to mention them, or you were able to totally discard them, as the Zionists Israelis trying to do? Is there a selective way to our rights in humanity?
Palestinian have denied themselves over the period of almost 70 years by rejecting partition and Camp David in 2000.
Manny, you seem to be buried in the Zionist brainwashing propaganda that has been fed to you for those deceitful 70 years that your are talking about, and until you take your head out of that blinding sand and view the real facts( not made up for Jewish and public consumption Hasbara) by listening to some decent human beings that happen to be Jewish, and has participated in those atrocities and false history, including the intention of israel in creating peace with the Palestinians while stealing and dispossessing them of their homes, freedom, and robbing them of many innocent lives! You keep believing that other stories that you are telling me about, while Israel is smearing the name of all Jews and creating that Isolation feeling from the rest of the world! You think, never again, just means having and arson of nuclear bombs, or maybe should it be joining humanity, in finding a better life for all? May you see the light one day and find peace, not the victimhood and the pre traumatic stress syndrome that you dwell in! Good luck to you !
Unfortunately, Mr. Gordis is only a symptom of the ailing, disappearing American Jewish community. Jews who look at Israel from afar, through some sort of Western-liberal prism, are no better than other types of cultural imperialists trying to impose incompatible values on the none-Western world. One cannot understand or feel Israel as a diaspora Jew, because such a Jew is fundamentally detached from the Israeli experience. Mr. Gordis, you can go ahead and keep living your comfortable life in North America, where your biggest worries (for now) are the rise of Donald Trump or the way you feel about this issue or that (and here I really do mean “feel” because in the American Jewish context, politics is only a feel-good hobby). Meanwhile, we Jews in Israel will continue developing our reestablished indigenous home in the Middle East, along with its security and its particularistic culture, which is not rooted in Western thought but rather in an ancient civilization and a current Middle Eastern reality. And for those diaspora Jews who want to preserve the future of their people, it would be wise to move to your real homeland and join in the continuing Jewish national renaissance.
Many of us have lived in Israel, continue to go there on a regular basis, have family and close friends there. We know what Israel faces every day and do not have our heads in the “proverbial sands” of the Negev or any other desert. Many Israelis that I know also disagree with the direction in which Israel and its politics has gone-to far to the right and too discriminatory not only towards Israeli Arabs but also towards Mizrachi Jews. Yes, Israel must defend itself but not to the extent that it makes itself a pariah in the eyes of the world. One catches more flies with honey etc. American politics is not a “hobby” for many of us, but a serious matter about which we are quite worried at this point of time and fear for the future of America and its minorities (Jews included) as well.
I lived on Israel many years and serve ed in the army during the 1982war and the 1st intifada. I went through periods where I objected to occupation and sympathized with Palestinians. I attended Peace Now rallies I held out great hope for the Oslo process even when heinous acts of terri were committed by Hamas. The failure of Camp David and the 2nd intifada was the game change for me. That’s where I learned how deep hatred of Israel and its very existence is with the Palestinian population. the 2nd intifada was a game changed for Israelis’ The terror acts were so deeply personal within the 67 lines, that it virtually killed the peace movement. Israelis felt no hope for a real peace.
That said, I realize that the occupation’s unsustainable if Israel is to remain Israel. But the approach Tikkun, BDS activists and of the world takes is ALL wrong. Pressuring Israel and imposing sanctions is only going to entrench Israelis and give them a feeling of fear and insecurity. Calling Israel “genocidal’ is dishonest and offensive. The honest approach is to equally pressure both sides to come to a peace agreement. Hamas has created a human rights nightmare in Gaza by turning it into a launching pad for rockets directed at civilians. Abbas is an empty suit in control of a corrupt Palestinian Authority. Leaders for both governing terroristic bodies are getting filthy off of aid fireweed to help ordinary Palestinians. So taking an honest look at both sides goes a long way.