The recently passed Boycott Bill has inspired shockwaves that are reverberating across the Jewish world.

Inside Israel there are many questions that have been raised. Here is another example of a private member’s bill (not government initiated) flying under the radar until it’s too late. A healthy parliamentary democracy is usually typified by a very small number of private members bills (Canada only passed 200 in one hundred years). In Israel, there are over a thousand tabled a year, making it almost impossible for the Knesset and its committees to understand what they are actually voting on.

It is also a sign of healthy parliamentary democracy for major political figures to take a stand on the big issues of the day. Yet somehow the Prime Minister (Bibi), the Defence Minister (Barak) and the Education Minister (Saar) were all too busy that day to come to the Knesset and vote on the Boycott Law.

The American Jewish reaction has also grabbed Israeli public attention. The ADL very publicly called the Boycott Law “a disservice to Israeli society” which “may unduly impinge on the basic democratic rights of Israelis to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.” ZOA reclarified their position, and supported the bill hesitantly while calling it “not perfect”. Not perfect, might have been the nicest thing said about the Boycott law, but while we are preoccupied in endlessly analyzing the strengths and weakness of this bill we are missing another momentous undercurrent; not in Israel but in American Jewish life.

The accepted wisdom of Diaspora Jewish involvement in Israeli policy is changing. The long running mantra of: “we support Israel’s right to make policy and don’t deal with the policy itself”, is being eroded. And the time-honored excuse for not intervening in Israeli politics, of not serving in the Army or paying Israeli taxes, is getting weathered.

Another recent example of this was the American Jewish pushback on the proposed Conversion Bill, this could still be explained away as not solely interfering with internal Israeli policy as it had direct repercussions on the US Jewish community. But the boycott law cannot be seen in this light. It quite simply offended the sensibilities of First Amendment-loving Jews, and marked a deviation of Israeli policy from the Israel they would like to see.

Israel has long been a building block of American Jewish identity, the question is, how does this relationship have to adapt as we see more American Jews aware of, and troubled by, Israeli policy?

Does this mark the weakening of ties between the Jewish communities, or a new found dynamism, which will result in American Jews caring more?

If the American Jewish Community is beginning to perceive the State of Israel as a battleground for Jewish Identity, and are starting to feel that they have a right to join the conversation, then we are moving towards a more mature and meaningful relationship.

However, the majority of Israelis feel, and maybe justifiably so, that Israeli policy should be decided by those living in Israel.

Can we develop a new model of American Jewish connection to Israel that is politically aware, yet maintains a distance from direct participation?

Anton Goodman is the Israel Engager Shaliach to the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington

The post No Representation without Taxation appeared first on Makom Israel.

Based on Makom’s experiences working with rabbinic students studying in Israel from the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Hebrew Union College, I would suggest Danny points to a real issue but may overstate his case by bringing the most extreme examples.

At the same time as there are students openly hostile (hostile is different than critical) to Israel, there are also students who are highly Israel engaged (whose parents are Israeli, who are graduates of Birthright, Lapid, and Masa programs, and who grew up in the Conservative or Reform camping systems, etc.)

Most students are somewhere in-between. The education that the Jewish community has provided them with – both about things Jewish and particularly about Israel – has been quite infantile. Jewish educational systems often choose to raise up consumers and not citizens; people who are willing to pay dues but not be active participants in building the Jewish present and future. Jewish education has not encouraged them to contend with questions of significant meaning, has not trained them to ‘hug and wrestle’. Their sense of Judaism/Jewishness is vague – combining two pieces in uneasy tension:

(a) a highly spiritualized sense that Judaism/Jewishness is a kind of comforting niche from the ravages of real life

(b) a sense that Judaism and American Liberalism are one and the same.

With regards specifically to Israel, these students have been failed by the Jewish community leadership and by the State of Israel:

(1) The American Jewish community – in traditionally promoting a ‘rose colored glasses’ approach to Israel has not left room for the nuanced discussion until recently. Additionally, the retreat in American Jewish life from an understanding of Judaism/Jewishness as not only communal but also ethnic/national (including Hebrew language fluency) renders connection with Israel nearly incomprehensible.

(2) The State of Israel promotes a status quo of Israeli ignorance about American Jewish life, and essentially ‘illegalizes’ non-Orthodox Judaisms. Increasingly the realities of Israeli public discourse reflect a growing tribalism and a reduced commitment to democratic values. Both play a role in molding an Israel that is increasingly difficult for American Jews to relate to in a positive way.

(3) The rabbinic training programs – although they have their students in Israel for the year – have found difficulty in articulating programs that put people’s personal-professional engagements with Israel on the table as a key part of becoming and being a rabbi and Jewish educator.

Danny is right about the emergence of an increasingly confident voice in American Jewish life that is a kind of neo-diasporism that sees Israel as something between an embarrassment and a crime. The voices that he brings in his article represent extremes – but are worrisome because of the profound lack of Jewish solidarity they express. Our Makom experiences suggest that the conversation for Jewish solidarity needs to be inclusive, and like the Pesach seder that all four sons – and daughters – deserve a place at the table.

Ultimately, training institutions need to provide future rabbis and educators with the conditions where a serious, well grounded conversation about the place of Israel in contemporary Jewish life. I know that Danny would agree with me in recalling Proverbs 29:18 “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

The post Helping our Rabbinic Students appeared first on Makom Israel.

It began with the realization of how much Debbie Friedman had affected my identity and values, and has now been blown away by Barack Obama’s speech in Arizona

I know that Obama is now apparently a controversial figure, and there tends to be a form of ‘motivated skepticism’ applied to anything he says (as there was, from the other end of the spectrum, when George Bush would open his mouth) but I urge you to listen to a speech which, as far as I can tell, is entirely a-political.

Quite the opposite. Faced with the gift-plattered opportunity to stick it to Sarah Palin, he instead chose to rise above the politics and speak of shared humanity, of hope, and of heroes.

I have to admit, all this hero-talk has always challenged me. Giuliani and Bush rolled out the hero stuff after 9/11 as well, and it always struck me as a very American trait: To rush to crown heroes. But the more I think about it, the more I respect this desire to emphasise the positive, and to find human symbols of hope.

The Jewish traditions I’d always learned about heroes were more about their ability to rein in their evil impulses, in Britain heroes died out after the 2nd World War, and in Israel Zionist heroes were carefully forged and just as deliberately dismantled. But America strikes me as a nation that consciously creates heroes to believe in. As Obama’s speech makes very clear, it is a moral choice to dig out and flesh out the hero shining out of a moment of darkness. I find myself moved and inspired.

From now on I’m going to start looking out for heroes in Israel.

This time round, meet the 17 year olds demonstrating for the right to a year’s community service (Shnat Sherut). These are young people who are demonstrating, fighting, in order to voluntarily do social work for a year. Can you comprehend that? This is not instead of their army service – it’s prior to their army service. They want to serve Israel for four years, instead of three. They want to work with those with disabilities, and those in poverty – voluntarily. And they’ve been demonstrating for more opportunities to do so. That counts as heroism in my book.

One final thing about the Obama speech. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the ultimate argument for how humanism, compassion, and tolerance can walk hand in hand with nationalism. It’s not a rhetorical sleight of hand. Worth contemplating when looking at the idea of a Jewish Nation State.

The post On heroes and hero worship appeared first on Makom Israel.

And I was regretting this as I climbed into the driving seat of the rented car, set Galatz and 88FM as my presets, and launched onto Route 1. And suddenly I got my perspective back: there was a student demonstration against over-funding for Haredi yeshiva students; a general strike on the cards; and Ofer Eini (head of the Histadrut Labor Union) called Ehud Barak an Ahabal (fool in Arabic). Israel in HD. Doesn’t get better than that. And it made me remember the wonderful Hebrew adage – What you see from here you can’t see from there. It’s a famous excuse from Israeli politicians when they don’t fulfill election promises, yet there is a lot of truth to it.

On this trip to Israel the shoe has been on the other foot and I noticed how even sophisticated analysis of the US lacks the all important nuances which provide the backdrop. US coverage in Israel seems to be at a peak at the moment. The American elections of Nov. 2nd have been reported so widely that right-wing activist Moshe Feiglin accused secular Israel of treating America as a divine entity. And many Israelis have been waiting for these elections as expectantly as Americans. There are 2 main schools of thought, the first (which I may be so bold as to suggest is lead by our fearless Prime Minister) feels that a Republican-led congress will weaken Obama’s administration and ultimately take the heat off Israel – Obama’s perceived animosity towards Israel will be blunted. The second school of thought, propagated by Alon Pinkus (the former Israeli consul in New York) and other analysts, is the exact opposite. They suggest that with Obama’s ability to impact on domestic affairs in decline, his attention will be turned towards the international arena, and in particular the Middle East.

There has been a good deal of insightful analysis of the state of American politics, with questions as to Obama’s sincerity in his humble-pie defeat speech, and the economic-centric nature of the American voter. But other areas have been neglected – especially the grassroots changes within the Republican Party and the repercussions of evolving streams of political thought in America. I have also found a growing misconception that support for Israel in America follows party lines, with Republicans presented as Israel saviors and Democrats rabid critics.

Just as music happens in between the notes, understanding where a society is “at” takes more than a collection of news reports. A good example of this is a stunning book I have started reading authored by the food correspondent for the local Jerusalem Time Out-esque magazine Kol HaIr – All the city. In Ochel BaAmida – Eating standing up, Asaf Gavron chronicles his experiences with Jerusalem fast food establishments in diary-style entries which use political and social intrigues as a technicolor backdrop. His style, more than the content, encapsulates what Israel is all about, the blurring of boundaries, between art and life, people and concepts, and plate and pitta.

On my return to America I made my regular stop at dunkin’ doughnuts and ordered a gingerbread latte, I was engulfed in a sea of Latin American Spanish as I spilled coffee on my copy of the Washington Post. No matter where you are context is king.

This trip to Israel raised many questions for me but it also crystallized several others: We need to start focusing more on the set and less on the action. It is the background which creates the depth and clarity of the picture – we can’t bluescreen Israel.

Anton Goodman is the Israel Engager Shaliach to the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington

The post What you see from here, you can’t see from there appeared first on Makom Israel.

He’s a committed Jew, with his youngest child attending a local Jewish day school, he plays hardball and swears like a trooper – all facts which endear him to the average Israeli. But we just don’t get him, either you’re with us or your against us. It’s just that simple, right?

Well, wrong.

We have come across this conundrum in the past with an even more prominent American Jewish statesman, Henry Kissinger. Kissinger boasted to a group of leading American Jews in a closed meeting in 1974 that he had personally made the decision which helped Israel win the Yom Kippur War (despite much evidence to the contrary); but then in a meeting with the Iraqi Foreign Minister in 1975, Kissinger offered him a “small, friendly Israel” cut back to her earlier size. Israeli politicians from Rabin to Sharon always made a point to get Kissinger’s blessing, yet Kissinger hobnobbed with the Syrians and Egyptians just as congenially. We couldn’t work out Kissinger’s loyalties, and the Israeli nationalist protests against him have only been matched by those against the Obama administration, and Rahm Emanuel.

But both Rahm and Kissinger have been clear about their allegiance. They have acted and lobbied for policies which they believed were in the best interest for their country, America. They have connections with their Jewish identity, Rahm much more so than Kissinger, but their ultimate national loyalty lies, as befits the positions they held, with their nation. Rahm Emanuel acted how a million Liberal Jews in his position would have done, faced with a new President at his side and a strong right-leaning Israeli coalition government opposite him. I also cannot blame Rahm for some of the controversial policy decisions and poor political plays coming out of Israel during his time in office –even an AIPAC mole in the White House would have slapped his forehead in despair.

Yet Rahm still leaves me scratching my head concerning divided loyalties. I feel that the old chestnut youth-movement question: ‘What are you more – American or Jewish?’ needs to be updated. American Jews have proved that both loyalties can coexist, even complement each other, but what happens when we throw Israel into the mix? If a core tenet of Jewish Identity is a connection with the State of Israel, can a Jewish American ever be truly impartial? If they can are they any less of a Jew? And if they can’t are they any less of an American?

The bottom line is whether political ideologies, American identity and relationship to Israel can honestly align. I get the impression that many American Jews are compartmentalizing and in the long-run that can’t be healthy. I wonder what the alternatives might be.

First appeared in www.shalomdc.org

Anton Goodman is the Jewish Agency Israel Engager Shaliach to the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

The post Mighty Rahm appeared first on Makom Israel.

I still think about the signs, posters and graffiti that I saw in our first few days here. There is graffiti stating ‘Kahane was right’, ‘Gush Katif – we won’t forget and we won’t forgive’ and other notations indicating the right-wing leanings of the residents here. Bumper stickers tell a similar tale. There were also printed posters telling America to mind its own business and some hardline statements toward Obama and his recent demands on Israel. Seeing these posters as a brand new olah from America gave me mixed feelings – or perhaps just a weird feeling. Even though I agreed with many of these sentiments and left much of my life behind in America to become Israeli, and want to feel like an Israeli, I still feel like an American.

The streets of our yishuv [settlement] are closed to traffic on Shabbat, and the only car that is seen then is the security vehichle that drives around 24/7. When we travel into Jerusalem, we pass through a checkpoint that looks like a tollbooth. When we order furniture or a refrigerator to be delivered, stores charge 250 – 300 shekels more for delivery because we are over the green line. It’s not like they bring our stuff in a different truck, or bring a security guard with them, and it’s not like we are hundreds of kilometers away. They charge an extra fee because they can.

We are still settling in. As much as our new home and yishuv feel very much like home, we have only been here two weeks and I feel like we are all still in a bit of ‘vacation’ mode. I think real life will start to set in around September 1st with the start of the school year. And with the start of school, I feel like my kids – even thought they’re still young – will be talking to their peers about things they hear about – things that are part of the reality here.

And so I wonder how I will deal with the big picture questions my kids will ask about bombs, rockets and what the green line is all about. I wonder how I will explain to them why some people use the term “Occupied Territory.” I wonder how I will explain to my kids what a “Palestinian” is.

I feel strongly that this land is ours, that we have every right to live here and that we must do everything possible to hold on to this land. I want my kids to feel the same way I do, and to ascribe to the same beliefs as I do – doesn’t every parent? But I also feel that it’s important to teach all sides of the story so that people learn to look at an issue from all angles.

And sitting here now, I wonder if that is always possible.

The post Making Aliyah to the West Bank: Touchdown! appeared first on Makom Israel.

I’m a big planner. My husband and I have been planning our aliyah for the past nine years. We started off by making a commitment to move within a certain number of years – and we stuck to it. Our big fear was being one of those well meaning couples who say they’re working on a “two year plan” – and never actually move. We picked something realistic (and very far off at the time) – we said we’d move within eight to ten years. Our rationale for not making aliyah as soon as we got married was this: Making aliyah is hard. I know many families who have made the big move and then after a year or two or three, found for one reason or another that they just couldn’t pull it off, or that Israel really wasn’t for them. And they went back to America. And so we planned.

We wanted to do everything within our power to sew up our loose ends in America. We wanted to finish our degrees here, knowing it would be harder to do that in Israel, and we started our careers here. But we also tried really hard not to put down roots. We never invested money in furniture, or in a house that we would find difficult to leave. We involved ourselves in the community, but always with a feeling that everything was temporary. And we talked about moving to Israel constantly – even when it was years away. We did this not only to give our relatives lots of time for the idea to sink in, but also so that it remained in the forefront of our mind.

A few months ago, we announced to our friends and family that we were moving to Israel this summer. Many were surprised, and asked us, “Isn’t that, like, two years away?” The passage of time surprised us to some degree as well, and not all of our plans (okay, a lot of our plans) have not gone exactly as we had hoped. But here we are, exactly four weeks away from getting on a plane and starting over in Israel.

America has been great. This country has provided our family with tremendous opportunity. But somehow it is not and has never been really home for us. In some ways, I feel as if our whole lives up to this point have been the prologue of a really complicated story – the preparation, the foundation, the build-up. But now we stand at this crossroads. And I am ready to turn the page and start Chapter 1 of the story. In Israel.

The post The Aliyah Diaries: T minus 4 weeks… appeared first on Makom Israel.

…We, members of the people’s council, representatives of the Jewish community of Eretz-Israel and of the Zionist movement…, hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the state of Israel.

-Israel Declaration of Independence

As I suggested in my last entry, in thinking about what it will take for Jews and Arabs to live together in peace in Israel, there are (at least) four different dimensions to consider: the political, the historical, the cultural, and the personal.

The most fundamental is the political – defining a shared life here requires us to agree upon a political structure that meets enough of the basic needs of each group to allow them to have an interest in sustaining that structure and not seeking to overthrow it. The United States is based on an approach in which the individual is the measure of all: each person has equal and inalienable rights, in a state that explicitly declines to make any differentiation between religious, racial, or ethnic categories of individuals – regardless of your religious belief, your color, where your grandparents were born, you are equal to all other citizens in your rights, obligations, and opportunities (of course, sometimes practice lags behind theory…). Lawmakers are elected by majority vote, and those lawmakers in turn make decisions by majority vote. It is understood, and formalized in the Constitution, that this majority rule does not give the majority the right to infringe on the basic freedoms of the individual; the fact that the majority are Christian doesn’t give them the right to make laws that will infringe on the rights of non-Christians, even though they might very much want to. So while the US might be a Christian state in terms of the vast majority of its population, its Christian-ness cannot find significant expression in its laws. Most Jewish citizens of the US treasure this reality and understand how it revolutionized the life of the Jewish people after centuries of discrimination under law in European states.

Israel, in contrast, defines itself as the national homeland of the Jewish people, a Jewish state. The raison d’etre of the state is the restoration of the historic sovereignty of the Jewish people in its homeland. It is not based on the equal rights of every individual, but on the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. So for me, who grew up in and valued the US concept of individual freedom, living in a state in which that concept is not primary, causes a certain discomfort. How can these two sets of values be reconciled?

Israel could be like the US, with total formal equality of individual rights, and the Jewishness of the state simply determined by the fact that the large majority of the population are Jewish and therefore are free to live out their Jewishness fully, yet without significantly infringing on the rights of others to fulfill themselves as individuals and preserve, privately, their religious and/or ethnic identity. That would require a constitution based on near-consensus, guaranteeing that it would be impossible for the majority to curtail the individual rights of the minority – and guaranteeing that the definition of the state as Jewish homeland would be similarly immutable.

Another, European, model, would see the state as comprising a dominant ethnic majority and a minority ethnic group recognized by law as having a degree of autonomy, at least in cultural areas like language and education. This model was not all that successful in 20 th century Europe, as there was always tension between group members’ loyalty to their group and their loyalty to the state. Politics became a constant power struggle between the majority and minority groups, in which individual rights could be diminished, as majority rule was too often seen as the right of the majority group to do what they wanted, without consideration for the sensitivities of the minority – who were seen as, and saw themselves as “outsiders.”

Israel has remained suspended somewhere between these two models for 61 years, leaving both the Jewish majority and the Arab minority living in a perpetual feeling of being threatened by the other. One of these days we’re going to have to decide what we are.

The post Deciding what we are appeared first on Makom Israel.

The Ukrainians and I earned overtime pay by working some nights, pouring buckets of dirt off of a rickety balcony and into a dumptruck that could only double-park during off hours. I slept on a mound of dirt for 15-minute stretches and focused on resisting the cold. I didn’t join my co-workers for “SMO-KEENG” time activities which, confusingly, included no tobacco but shots from a brown paper bag instead. That is, I didn’t join them until I came to collect a paycheck on New Year’s Eve. It seemed right to join them for their “Sylvester” celebration, to contribute some baklava to the party, and to give the struggling men a gift of a Russian-Hebrew phrasebook. Later, I saw them leave the worksite, as usual, in their tweed jackets, pulled over their work clothes in a throwback to a different time.

These men had been closer to me than our Palestinian co-workers. We were on the same jobs, could leave the building for lunch, and united together to stay somewhat above the fray of the smoldering Intifada II. They weren’t Jewish but had some sort of Jewish relations: sons-in-law or something like that. I was Jewish-American but wasn’t planning to stay forever and my mediating personality led me to listen patiently when the Palestinians explained to me in Hebrew their disgust with Prime Minister Barak, who I felt had taken enormous risks for peace. I was their designated lunch purchaser, which filled me with some shame since I knew that their work permits did not allow them to leave the premises. Of course, the Ukrainians and Palestinians had even less in common. I knew about the Palestinians’ history and shared a common language with them. I could imagine their villages and knew about their politics.

Eventually, I moved on. I developed friendships with Israelis, worked on a kibbutz, and studied in a tour guide training course. By the end of the year, when I showed an Australian friend around town, he said, “You’ll be back. This is like home to you.” That statement sounded more convincing coming out of the mouth of a non-Jewish tourist than out of a Zionist fellow-traveler. Yes, I thought, this is home.

I’ve felt that way for nine years now, even though my life is firmly rooted in America, by bacground, family, career, and habit. Israel, though, was anything but foreign.

Until Yisrael Beiteinu surged in the polls. I was caught by surprise, having missed the earlier indicators of that process, and was shocked with revulsion when I read Lieberman’s comment that “Israeli Arabs should pack their bags and go to hell” and confronted his new role as kingmaker.

I remembered my Palestinian co-workers and realized that I felt more at ease with them than with Lieberman. I thought of Ukrainian co-workers and wondered if there relations were among those from the former Soviet Union who are so important to Lieberman’s base.

As a construction worker in Israel, I was underpaid and lived in a dirty apartment. But I knew that the state privileged me and that I could be welcomed by Israeli society. Now, I wondered if I really knew what that society was and what it would become.

I still have reasonable confidence in the state but considered the limits of that confidence for the first time. I felt like my dilettante Zionist acquaintances in the US who are “troubled” by Israel’s actions and have ambivalent feelings about the country but have spent little time reading about or visiting it. Was I a fair-weather Zionist now, too?

Of course, I still love Israel. But now I know that that love looks different depending on where in the labyrinth of streets, or labyrinth of Israel, you look.

The post Revisiting memories of construction work in Jerusalem appeared first on Makom Israel.

Any newspaper reader or BBC listener would tell you that Israel is a state whose military machinery is at the center of the society, and that engaging in war, security and defense is most (if not all) that the country does. (It might even be surprising to some people to know that the citizens of the country have time for much else – like making eggs for their kids in the morning or making love to their partners at night).

One of the questions this group of educators was asking itself was, “how will this film, a tell-all about one of the darkest periods of Israel’s history, going to play to mainstream Americans? Will the image of Israel, as a war-mongering country, only be confirmed in exchange for a couple of $10.00 movie tickets on a Saturday night?” And how would this film be viewed by next gen American Jews, whose relationship with Israel ranges from irrelevant at best and hostile at worst? How on earth would a film like this one help the cause of inspiring a connection the way that programs like birthright israel do? What kind of educational materials should we create which could offer “context” and “framing” so that those who see the film will understand it in all of its richness and complexity?

The second time I saw the film, it was with an Israeli friend, and we were consumers of popular culture along with everyone else. We both agreed that the film was incredibly courageous and a cinematic triumph. We were struck by how particular the film was to Israel (my friends said to me, “I know these characters in the film, my friends who were in Lebanon are just like them”). And how universal its message was as well – in short that war is hell, whether it is in the rice paddies of Vietnam, the urban streets of Bagdad or in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. We left the film proud that the Israeli cultural scene, and Ari Folman in particular, created such a cinematic tour-de-force which can compete on the world stage. That alone, is a celebration worth noting.

What would it look like for mainstream Americans and American Jews to know Israel by its cultural creations more than from its latest military actions? To know that productions like Waltz with Bashir speak to an Israeli society in which its citizens are complex, family and friendship-centered, troubled and cowardly, passionate and courageous, and capable of self-analysis at every turn. The arts enable us to hold multiple truths comfortably. They provoke conversations and questions, and do not offer easy answers. For Israel to animate our lives in any serious way, we need to look beyond the headlines…to the arts. And that would be worth an Oscar, indeed.

The post Waltz with the Oscars appeared first on Makom Israel.