A year or so back Andrew Sullivan framed an important question, Are there any anti-Zionists (or non-Zionists for that matter) writing in the American mainstream media? There are of course many Zionists. In fact, uninterrogated celebrations of Jewish nationalism, or should I say, plucky nationalism, are all around us in our media environment. Two recent examples.
1. In the current Saveur, food writer David Sax reminisces about beginning his journalistic career in Israel in 2002 during the second intifadah, hanging out with a high school friend and subsisting on schnitzel sandwiches, an Israeli staple.
That fall, Cliff and I unwittingly tapped into a welcoming segment of Israeli society. Under the cold fluorescent lights of the schnitzel shacks, to the music of cutlets bubbling in oil, we came together with deliverymen, off-duty soldiers, and religious zealots, talking politics, pop culture, and the future of Zionism in a broken hodgepodge of languages. Our true link was a sandwich that embodied the country’s conflicted identity: a mix of high European heritage and hard-won terroir, whipped together haphazardly, only to endure as a symbol of plucky nationalism.
2. Ten days ago, Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of religion and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta, spoke with Guy Raz on NPR about her new book, The Eichmann Trial.
RAZ: You write that this trial transformed Jewish life in Israel. How so?
Ms. LIPSTADT: It both showed the younger generations one of the reasons for an existence of the State of Israel. Had there been a Jewish state, it might not have been able to stop what was going on. But one of the reasons many people who were murdered were murdered was because they had no place to go. And Israel would have been a refuge. It more than would have offered them refuge. It would have welcomed them home. It would have seen them as belonging in Israel.
But it did something else as well. It showed the younger generation that they, as sabras, you know, that’s what the Israelis call Jews born in Israel, and it’s like a cactus, prickly outside and sweet inside. But they feel – they felt very self-sufficient. They felt: We fought against Arab armies that tried to destroy us after the declaration of the state. We won. We live in a hostile sea, and yet, we manage to survive and to thrive. And we are a different kind of Jew.
