Today we had a family lunch for my mom’s 80th in Cape Cod, with 26 people and lobsters and corn, and I finally got into Israel/Palestine with my little brother. It felt good, and about time.
My brother was reclining on a couch next to the table, due to an ankle sprain in the hard fields of his tennis ladder, and I was a few seats away next to my California nephew. My nephew’s hip on the issue. He was telling me about a college friend of his who went over to Israel to learn Arabic and try to talk reconciliation to the Israelis. The friend wasn’t Jewish, and the Israelis weren’t interested in what he had to say. He felt discrimination on that score. Also, in the Arabic class whenever there was a problem, the teacher would go into Hebrew to explain it to the students. My nephew’s friend was upset about that, too. He left Israel early.
As my nephew talked, I tore apart my lobster and sucked the green guts, and reflected that my mother’s love of un-Kosher food is one reason I’ve ended up doing this website. As chauvinistic as my family was about Jewishness, they didn’t go as far as a lot of their friends. They thought some Jewish law was hooey. From the time I was little, in Baltimore, my mother bought vast quantities of oysters and crabs into the house. All un-Kosher. I don’t think Jewish law makes all that much of a distinction between eating oysters and marrying outside the faith. We flouted the law with gusto, and I think that gave me life lessons.
I said something to my nephew about the "occupied territories," and my brother piped up from the couch, "Jews don’t say the words, ‘occupied territories.’"
I didn’t take the bait. I smiled and said, "That’s right."
Then a little while later, he said, "Bro, as my number one Arab-loving family member, I need to ask you a question."
"Fire away," says I.
Stern
"OK, I’m listening to Howard Stern the other day [my brother’s Maharishi] and he reads the list of Nobel Prizes won by Israelis and Jews, and it’s incredibly long, and then he reads the list of Nobels won by Arabs. In all the Arab countries, in their whole civilization. Well there were none. And that seems to me the argument that you just can’t answer. The Jews are responsible for so many incredible modern scientific advances. I mean, what do you say to that?"
I shrugged and smiled. "I bet it’s true."
My brother started laughing and said, "You’re like Gandhi. Look at you, you’ve gone all Gandhi."
I had to laugh, too, and then my nephew took up the gauntlet and told my brother about Edward Said’s book "Orientalism."
Said
I let the conversation drift away after that. But I hope I left my brother, who’s incredibly confident, with a shifting-sand-like feeling under his feet. Of course I could have countered what he said by talking about Jewish exceptionalism, and scientific superiority, and its pitfalls, but I let it go. It’s hard to win an argument with him.
The conversation–our first on the issue– was the topper of a really good weekend. I watch Jewish identity like a hawk, and my sense from the weekend is that the Palestinian counter-narrative is beginning to be normalized inside Jewish life. We have our camp, mostly among young Jews, and everyone else knows we’re here to stay. They abide us. I mean are they going to tell my nephew not to read Edward Said? No.
Also, my mother said rather generously that Sara Roy had talked the week before at the Church of the Messiah, and a close friend of hers had gone and been completely swayed by Roy, and then reported to my mother about Sara Roy’s Holocaust background, and about the ruckus created by some hasbara types in the Q-and-A. My mom conveyed to me that she knows that the whole conversation here is changing.
And while it’s true I tend to project my own experience, I feel more comfortable than ever talking about non-Zionism with family and friends. I’m out of the closet! And now that I’ve been to Hebron and Gaza, no one’s going to tell me I didn’t see human bondage.
My brother’s attitude does speak to something important in the Jewish community. A typical scene in Jewish life is when a Jew walks away from Palestine reeling with shock and turns to Jews in his delegation who’ve been there before, and says, What do the Israelis think? Or, Have American Jews seen this!!??
And one of the other Jews says, "They don’t know about it." And another says, "They don’t want to know about it."
I think the second answer is the wiser one. Most Jews just don’t want to know. All the information has been in their laps, they know it’s true at some level, but they’re turning away, turning away, turning away. My nephew and I are bringing the whoopie cushions.
