In time for Israel’s 60th birthday, three new books celebrate the Jewish state and its connection to Diaspora Jewry.
The most instantly appealing of them may be “A Dream of Zion: American Jews Reflect on Why Israel Matters to Them,” edited by Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin (Jewish Lights, 266 pages, $24.99).
This is an anthology of short essays by a variety of people, from “professional Jews” (rabbis and community activists) to college students, plus samples of meditations by historic figures (poet Emma Lazarus; Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter; Rabbis Arthur Hertzberg, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Abba Hillel Silver, Steven S. Wise; even the great pantomime comedian Harpo Marx).
This collection has some local Wisconsin interest. It includes essays by former Sheboyganite and now Brandeis University professor Sylvia Barack Fishman; Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, former Milwaukeean and now professor and author; and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).
But what most impressed even on a skim-through is the extent to which having a relationship to Israel is or has been a physical, intellectual, emotional and sometimes spiritual adventure for these writers — and, by extension, for any and perhaps all of us.
There are surprisingly few windy generalizations in these works, and a wealth of interesting and often moving personal or family experiences.
Fishman, for example, tells of her time working on a kibbutz as a college student in 1963; and even though she was “too American to surrender my destiny to the group,” still “In some mysterious way, this place was home.”
The book does feel weighted toward liberal Jews and their points of view. Nevertheless, it does include some Orthodox voices (author and broadcaster Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, Chabad Rabbi Hirshy Minkowicz), and so does provide a representative range of Jewish community views.
Selling ‘Sar-el’
Still, saying one supports Israel or feels connection to it is one thing; doing something meaningful about it is another.
Many of the writers in “A Dream of Zion” in fact do meaningful things, if only visiting Israel frequently. However, the second of the three books details one U.S. man’s experiences and adventures in providing a real and, apparently, much-appreciated service to the Jewish state.
Mark Werner, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, is an attorney in Raleigh, N.C., and is active in Jewish community organizations there. He also has been a frequent participant in the Volunteers for Israel program (known in Israel as “Sar-el”).
This places volunteers at military bases in Israel where for three weeks they perform important support tasks — painting, landscaping, repairing gas masks and radio transmitters, cleaning firearms, organizing supplies in warehouses — for which regular military people can’t be spared.
Werner likes to keep journals of his travels, and he did so for his Sar-el service. He has worked his notes up into a book, “Army Fatigues: Joining Israel’s Army of International Volunteers” (Devora Publishing, 279 pages, $21.95), that I found almost impossible to stop reading until I finished it.
Werner not only worked hard during his service, but he also met many fascinating people among his fellow volunteers, who came from all over the world, and among the Israeli military personnel who guided him, taught him, and ran the program.
Having been in the U.S. Navy Reserve myself, I don’t remember military work being as much fun as Werner makes it sound. But perhaps he had more fun because he served as a volunteer; or because Israeli military culture as he describes it is less spit-and-polish than American; or because the Israelis he met showed so much appreciation for his work.
In any event, as much as I hated my military experiences, Werner’s book makes me want to volunteer. “Army Fatigues” sells the Sar-el program wonderfully.
Religious Zionist
The third book, “For the Love of Israel and the Jewish People” (Urim Publications, 328 pages, $26.95) is exactly what its subtitle says, “Essays and Studies on Israel, Jews and Judaism.”
Its author, Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo, lives in Jerusalem. He runs an academy and a think tank where, according to the book’s jacket, “rabbis, educators and professors under Rabbi Cardozo’s guidance try to lay the foundations of a new approach to Judaism based on classical sources.”
It is clear from even a quick perusal that Cardozo is a religious Zionist. “All efforts to make Israel into a purely secular state will ultimately lead to its destruction,” he writes.
“In no way do we advocate an Israeli theocracy, but without a deep commitment to Judaism, the State of Israel will not be able to survive.”
It is also clear that, because this is an anthology of independent pieces, Cardozo repeats his ideas in different items; and that he is writing for people who already agree with him.
However, Cardozo writes well and with passion; so anybody who wants to learn about religious Zionism will find “For the Love of Israel and the Jewish People” a useful introduction to the subject.
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