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.
You got it right Phil.
Power feels good, even if it's not supposed to.
If for all the usual reasons jews cannot trust non-jews to handle anything involving jews, is the reverse also true? When's the last time you encountered a relationship where one person always distrusted the other, and the other never (eventually) responded in kind?
This is a really fine post, Phil. Thank you.
Thanks, Phil. Your admirable conscience–and Adam's–is what draws us to your site. When will the corporate "not-news" see the contradiction between the smug Israeli government demand that Palestinians learn to value education and that same government's refusal to allow all the eager Palestinian children to attend safe schools and the older students to study around the world? The Palestinians do value learning and peace: when will the Israeli Likud party and its supporters in the U.S. do the same? Only when the later care more about being enlightened– kind–, than about being powerful.
perceptive. ruminant. deeply human.
Seconding this sentiment. I'm on the outside looking in towards this community, and your commentary helps me understand the young American Jewish psyche and its struggles all the better. Thanks, Phil, and keep it coming.
This is a magnificent post, Phil. I hope everyone of those kids who were in that room last night read this. I absolutely concur with LeaNder22 that it's perceptive. ruminant. deeply human. And Susie is right: what draws most of us to this site is your and Adam's conscience and humanity. You two embody the Jewish values we admire, and that those kids aching over Jewish power ought to be developing in themselves. Those privileged kids in Manhattan ought to be screaming bloody murder about Palestinian kids denied an education they are crying to get. ————————– It does not trust the non-Jewish community to have any real role in Jewish/Israeli matters, yet it insists upon the opposite and if we should object to the inequity, there's been the anti-semitism spanky-spanky. Not any more. America is getting fed up with this bullshit.
P.S. I wonder how many of those kids in that room last night were also exercised over the Iranian protest. If they were, I wonder if they are capable of seeing the irony.
Phil link to Ben Murane's site above is well worth reading. The answer to Avigdor Lieberman's lament that Israel only needs better PR is embedded within it:
Indeed. Another truly wonderful and insightful look into the contradiction plaguing the Jewish soul. It's Phil at his witness-bearing best.
Is this prescient or is it too harsh a judgment at this point in time in the sense that Israel may yet pick another course?
Cry me a river.
The Myth of Jewish Powerlessness from Jewish Financial Aggression, Worldwide Economic Nakba The medieval Polish government treated different ethnic groups functionally in a sort of caste system and gave them full autonomy as long as they fulfilled their designated role. Polish Armenians had a governing council called the Voit while in principle the Council of the Four Lands, to which the most important Jewish communities (kehillot) sent delegates, ruled Polish Jewry from the 16th until the 18th century when the Jewish Council failed to meet its tax obligations. The Polish government effectively gave Polish Jews control of internal distribution of goods within Poland in addition to the role that they played in international trade from the beginning of the development of a distinct Polish Jewish community. From the 16th century onward a segment of Polish Jews partnered with the magnate class of Polish Szlachta (Gentry) in the highly exploitive arenda (estate management) system, which squeezed the serfs and peasants for practically everything they had and which has tremendous similarity to Friedmanite Neoliberal economic doctrine. Because increasing Jewish economic might was potentially threatening to the Polish ruling class, Polish Jews began to affect a sort of effeminate public style and culture in order to demonstrate that Jews were really harmless and that non-Jews should not be worried at the wealth and influence that Jews were gaining. The new effectively hyperwealthy Polish Jewish estate manager class co-opted the Rabbinical intellectual leadership in a development that was eventually to split the Jewish community in several ways and to create a very early form of class-based factionalism among Polish Jews. The arenda system probably set Polish economic development back centuries and eventually led to the collapse of Poland into the world’s first modern failed state when the Ukrainians rebelled in the 17th century.
Hey, OK! That's exactly the tune of an old popular NAZI tune. Love it! I can't wait for the next record up on the turnstile. We wont be weeping for the Israelis.
Gee, are you going to make Americans and Hasbara dual citizen Jews actually look at detailed history? Hats off to you, you could not have picked a harder task. Have you not got a hint from the Pro-Israel commenters on this site that they don't want to deal in real history? And certainly the whore USA congress won't do so either.
I would love to ask these warm, sensitive young people if they thought that since their Jewish identity meant so much to them, should – as a gentile – my "non-Jewish identity" means as much to me? Do they honestly expect me to be just as centered on my not being a Jew as they are in being Jewish? I am confused by how much reciprocity is expected in the centering of ourselves around this facet of our identity. I keep getting the idea that I am not supposed to emphasize my non-Jewishness as much as they are expected to emphasize their Jewishness – and that if I chose to imitate them, they'd be offended.
Tony Karon reported on this very same thing quoting a different history book. Think it's under one of his Wandering Jew blogs.
John Rose goes into this in his book, "The Myths of Zionism".
Kevin S. those warm sensitive people mainly want to make sure they can equivocate enough to avoid being cut out of the will. Phil has a dream, a dream that somehow "fixing" or even dismantling Zionism will redound to the credit of the Jewish people. It won't. Look, if you go to a party and crap on the rug and laugh, you might be able to avoid getting assaulted if you make excuses ("my toilet doesn't work) and clean it up. But don't count on getting invited back. And don't expect anyone to comment on how cleverly you cleaned it up. Remember, they had to watch you do it in the first place. I hope when Phil discovers that no-one is going to fall all over themselves with gratitude if we try to ameliorate the crimes of the Zionists it doesn't drive him back to Zionism. But I don't expect that.
"Do they honestly expect me to be just as centered on my not being a Jew as they are in being Jewish?" You can watch any Max Blumenthal video on the Christian Right for your answer.
Thors, you should appreciate the Mondoweiss imprimatur on the information you give out here. Phil has never once challenged or in any way indicated that acting as a conduit for you is somehow problematic to him. You should thank him for this. And I'm glad to know that your information is authoritative, and can be counted on for the straight dope. Right from the ferd, of course, of course. And who's ever heard of a talking ferd ?
I have the uneasy feeling I would hear lots of friendly fascism. The kind where you agonize over the cost to the native peoples of your privilege to watch people like you conquer a small overseas enclave and maybe even base your identity in part around it. Then by a stroke of genius, select implications are chopped off the guilt carcass and you're free to bask in the holy summer camp, secure in the knowledge you're against what those other people like you are doing over there across the green line. Some nerve, talking about Jewish power. What does occupying Jerusalem have to do with destroying the Aryan race through finance capital?
I despise the Christian Right. What about a secular non-Jew?