My headline is a line from Theodor Herzl's diaries. He went to Russia in 1902 and stopped in Vilnius, where he was besieged by the poor–the King of the Jews, he would deliver them from persecution. He was pulled to a wealthy man's summer house for dinner, with 50 people. "Ghetto, with good ghetto talk," Herzl, an assimilated/Vienna Jew, wrote. "The food that went with it was magnificent."
Last night I went to a session at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan called Love, Hate and the Jewish State. Sponsored by countless Jewish organizations including the Union of Progressive Zionists, Jewcy, the New Israel Fund– it was only for Jews 21-35 years old. Ben Murane of New Israel Fund generously allowed me to attend, and to listen in on a breakout “therapy” session in which young Jews spoke about their feelings about the Jewish state in the light of social justice concerns. The program was aimed at helping young Jews deal with their alienation from Israel’s behavior. Another sponsor, Makom, of the Jewish Agency for Israel, reflects the mood; it encourages "hugging and wresting" with Israel and Jewish identity–and moving to Israel.
The young people I listened in on had an expectation of privacy that I won't violate. They were all attractive and in their 20s. All were anguished to one degree or another, or they wouldn’t have been there; they recognized a disjunction between their participation in a democracy that elected a black man president and their attachment to a society that has elevated violence as a means to deal with a minority population. They came from Zionist- or Israel-attached families, and some were in pain. My favorite speaker was a kid who was Woody-Allenesque and not dodging the political contradiction at all. Another guy spoke movingly of being a leftist but of loving being in Israel, in a majority Jewish place–being in a place of Jewish power.
I better leave it at that. The feelings were tender inside the circle I sat in on, and I want to respect that tenderness, because I do not share it at all, and in fact I cannot really honor it. So let me leave it be.
The one thing I must say for them is that all the kids seemed unhappy with The-Israel-right-or-wrong attitude that they see in their families and communities.
I went out and talked to Ben Murane for a little while. Murane's an impressive guy; he knows the story. He said the main goal was to give young Jews a space to express feelings that they can’t otherwise express in the Jewish community. There will be "policy" ramifications of the session, he said; and I guess he meant chiefly policy within Jewish organizational life, how to deal with young people who are uncomfortable with Israel’s role. Ilan Wagner of Makom, of the Jewish Agency, underscored this point. The idea was not to confront the Jewish Federations or other elements of Jewish organizational life; the idea was to find a place for this conversation to happen inside the Jewish community. So that the community can move.
I have to wish these people the best. They were kind to me, and goddamnit the community needs to move.
All the same, I walked away with a sense of despair. This was a Jewish space like the ghetto summerhouse that Herzl visited before the extermination and deliverance of the Jews. It was a fragile space. But there's no ghetto, and these kids are trying to come to terms with a new phase of Jewish history–Jewish power. What I wonder is, How long will it take to come to terms with Jewish power? Maybe forever. And meantime I have witnessed incredible suffering in Gaza for which Jews bear the principal responsibility. The kids in Gaza can't get out of a territory smaller than my county in New York; and the kids in Gaza could never afford the luxury of a therapy session.
One of these days I promise you I will tell Summer Abu Zayed's story. That's her, at right. She's a beautiful young woman, just 23. She's been kept from accepting scholarships outside Gaza so many times she didn't want to tell my delegation the story, it was too painful.
Well, we made her tell us anyway, and– a proper young woman– she started to cry and then felt embarrassed. Summer lives in a true ghetto.
I go to an event like last night and feel despair. My community is blocked; that’s what's happening. It does not trust the non-Jewish community to have any real role in Jewish/Israeli matters (for the usual reasons: Jewish exceptionalism, Jewish history, the Holocaust). So it fumbles in the dark toward some awareness. It cannot heal itself from within. It needs to be engaged with other communities if it is going to act to end the persecution in Palestine. It needs to have Summer Abu Zayed in that room.
