Chicago — American Jews are rising to the challenge of helping Israelis pull through the terror war of the past 21 months. Virtually every element within the community has reconciled differences for the sake of the common good. Further, there has been remarkable consensus about where the common good lies.
Will this spirit of unity and consensus inform our response to other issues sure to return to the communal agenda, once a measure of stability returns to Israel?
First, let’s take stock of the community’s accomplishments. Some Israel advocacy efforts may have been slow off the mark after the onset of the Palestinian war in September 2000. The realization dawned gradually that nearly a decade of attempted peace-making had been squandered on a partner who apparently had always envisioned war.
But especially since Sept. 11, when the U.S. administration acknowledged that Israel’s and America’s enemies are more or less the same, and especially since the Pesach massacre in Netanya, the Jewish community pressed Israel’s case to Congress and the news media; began to raise tremendous sums of money; and rallied in Washington (more than 100,000) and a score of other places across the country.
What lessons can be learned from all of this?
First, when push comes to shove, American Jews connect to Israel, more, perhaps, than some might have thought before September 2000. American Jews don’t share (9/11 notwithstanding) nor fully understand Israel’s daily reality, but we respond when we see innocent Jews murdered in the streets.
Second, American Jews don’t brook anti-Semitism, and we know it when we see it. Anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism raises our dander; bald-faced Jew-hatred — as seen in the Arab news media and synagogue attacks in France, Belgium, England and Canada — reminds us of our past and strengthens our resolve.
Never again means zero tolerance not only for anti-Semitic remarks and acts, but also for attempts to delegitimize Israel’s right to respond to the Palestinian terror war.
No trouble uniting
Third, the American Jewish community displays high confidence in its relations to the wider polity over Israel-related issues. The will and the ability to show others the reason and the way to be pro-Israel and pro-Jewish is, in some respects, the legacy of Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War to subsequent generations of Jewish leadership. That legacy endures.
Fourth, perhaps most important, Jewish organizations have no trouble uniting when instinct signals that the times demand it. Rallies for Israel have included supporters from across the religious and political spectrum.
There has been a marked resurgence of ahavat hinam (Jews unconditionally embracing their fellow Jew) following a decade that saw many, often rancorous debates on divisive issues like recognition of non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism in Israel.
Thus has the silver lining shone from within the clouds. We wouldn’t want it any other way, would we?
We can be proud of how we’re facing the current crisis, and I hope we can learn from it when we return to the hard business of defining ourselves, rather than the bloody business of defending ourselves. (Remember the 1990s, when Jews argued about religious pluralism, wondered about the relevance of Zionism in the 21st century, and even entertained nutty notions such as “The New Middle East”?)
Of course self-defense is an act of self-definition. We have the courage and resolve to rally, lobby, speak, organize and give money because we believe in what we stand for.
We believe that Israel was giving peace a chance but Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat refused. We believe Jews have a right to live Jewish lives in Europe and anywhere else free of violence and harassment. We believe American and Israeli values of democracy and open society trump Middle Eastern theocracies and dictatorships.
We also know we have a larger purpose than to defeat those who would defeat us. Our work goes beyond survival. As a people, we have always been about pushing the human envelope.
Jews brought the monotheistic vision to the world. Jews promulgated the rule of law based on the dignity of man in the image of the Creator. Jews espoused the value of learning and literacy based on talmud Torah (the learning of wisdom).
Jews achieved the pinnacle of achievement in every civilization, where Jews in disproportionate numbers have been at the forefront in the sciences and the arts. Israel is the world’s model high-tech economy. I could go on.
I say this not out of chauvinism, but to say that our work, interest, motivation as a people always have been to try to make the world a better place. To paraphrase Rabbi Tarfon in the Talmud, it is not our task to finish the work of creation, but neither do we consider ourselves free to desist from it.
It’s not just doing the work that counts; hopefully, we’re learning that how we do the work counts at least as much. Nothing is more stultifying than Jews trying to fulfill the obligation to “do the work” without arguing, daring to wonder and even entertaining nutty notions. That’s the dynamic fueling Jewish achievement down through the millennia.
But back in the 1990s, there were too many examples — most notably the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin — of sinat hinam (baseless hatred), which led, according to our sages, to our calamities of yore and certainly distorted too many of our recent debates.
Inevitably, the unity we experience today will fade once a measure of stability returns to Israel and the level of threat subsides in the wider Jewish world.
Then let us at least learn this from the past 21 months of all-consuming concern and unified effort: That the light of ahavat hinam — the light behind our unity today — should illuminate all that we do and the way we treat our fellow Jew, even when their understanding of what’s right and best diverges from our own.
Aaron Cohen is executive editor of the JUF News and president of the American Jewish Press Association.
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