Unpacked: A Walker Returns Home

 

Shock to Sadness, sadness to fear, fear to anger.

 

Anger to despair, despair to feeling tired, feeling tired to going back to work on Sunday.

 

This has been my general process, in relating to Thursday night’s attack in Jerusalem.

 

What are we doing in this nutty land in the first place?

Following the attack, I read an article by Dr. Daniel Gordis, that asks this very question. Dr. Gordis contends that revisiting the question is the most important work for us right now.

 

According to Dr. Gordis, the tragedy from which we suffer as Israelis, is that we don’t remember the reason Jews created the State of Israel: to solve a history of suffering. We no longer connect to our dream to change the condition of the Jew from the powerless hunted to one who fights his hunter.

 

In general, I love Mr. Gordis’s work. He writes through eyes of an Israeli, a Jew, an academic and a worried parent. In doing so, he touches upon the true intensity that is the Israel experience.

 

That being said…

 

I would like to disagree. In the process, I wish to address Dr. Gordis’s question, and explain, maybe to you, maybe to me, what I think the Jewish People are doing in this nutty Land in the first place.

 

Dr. Gordis questions the strategy of Israel’s founders- disconnecting from traditional Jewish discourse. I wish to question the original dream. To me, that dream is the root of our problems.

 

If I exist so that I can defend myself, then my independence is contingent upon my subjugation. If I am independent in order to avoid being dependent- then I am still very much dependent. (Kind of like the non-conformists back at school, that always have an eye on the conformists so that they will make sure not to conform.).

 

I believe it very sad, if from the position of being hunted, my ultimate goal is to fight my hunter. Even as I fight back, I am still a victim. If I grow up with a vision of redemption that ends with attacking my hunter, then I will make sure to look for my hunter even when he is not there.

 

If before the State of Israel our nation often lived from sadness and fear, then in order to fight back and create our state, we moved on to anger.

Sadness to fear, fear to anger, anger to despair, despair to feeling tired, feeling tired to going to work on Sunday.

And that’s where we find Israel today- just trying to get to work on Sunday.

Dr. Gordis speaks of our current lack of historical awareness. It’s not that our generation of Jews and Israelis are unaware. It’s that we are tired. Anger and hope can hold up a burden with the help of adrenaline, but adrenaline runs out.

The answer is not to rekindle the fight of 1948.

The answer, I believe, is to try and figure out who we were, or why we were, before our fights began.

I want to be very clear: I don’t blame the founders of the State for anything. Of course they created a state out of being victims. They were victims. Of Holocausts, pogroms, persecution in Arab countries. True heroes translated their anger into this wonderful place where I live today and to them I am eternally grateful.

But their situation was not ideal. This country would not be fixed if we just became them.

There is a lot of discourse about the Zionism of old: if only we had their fervor, their dedication, their love of Israel.

Many critics say that we now take our existence for granted. I say to them, that their mistake is that they don’t take their existence for granted. Or at the very least, they can’t fathom our existence without seeing an enemy somewhere in the background.

 

I think it a grave mistake to suggest that we recapture the spirit of Israel’s founders. We can be inspired by it, but God forbid should we become it. I will defend myself because I exist- not vice versa. Israel is more than just a refuge for Jews.

 

Long before we were suffering Jews, we were Israel- a nation whose destiny was to create a Kingdom of kindness and truth and justice and peace, who reveals the Divinity that hides itself in every pocket and corner of everyone and everywhere.

 

It is not for naught that our country lies exactly on the cusp of East and West, western medicine and eastern medicine, Monotheistic worship and pagan, the gifts of ancient history and the advantages of modernity. We were created to be inspired by the world, to pick up the scattered lights all around it, and discover the fact that the scatter is really One.

 

We are in Israel in order to ask questions. We exist, so that we can find ourselves with an entire other nation to care for, to feel their pain at being occupied, and to figure out how to deal with it. Israel does not mean pretending that those people do not exist, and Israel is also not disengaging from our responsibility that they do.

 

We are sovereign over Jerusalem because our potential is to make space for everyone, within a limited space. We did not suffer so that we would feel deserving of the world’s sympathy. We suffered so that we could sympathize with the world when it suffers.

 

We are a proud and brilliant and wonderful people. We are fine for who we are, and don’t need to prove it to anyone, nor fight everyone who suggests otherwise. We just need to be us. When we generate that sense of integrity in the world, the world will see us as such.

 

This Sunday, I enter a month of reserve duty in the Israeli army. I am not going because I feel the need to defend. I don’t really feel that privilege anymore. I honestly just want to be home with my wife.

 

But I am going, because I want to be an active member of this country whose plight is so real to me. I want to be part of it and stand in the middle, so that one day, I will be there when we learn to value our existence for its own Infinite sake.

 

Although I am not yet a worried parent, I begin to think about the reality in which my children, God willing, will live.

 

I hope that the dream they grow up with does not include their fighting for my pain. I hope that they can appreciate our history without having to drag it around. I hope I never ask them to drag it around.

May they not be victims, either to hunters or to an existence founded upon fighting hunters. If they must defend themselves, may it never be in order “to defend their right to defend themselves.” May that never be a question for them.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Israel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.