Rabbi Tracee Rosen
Congregation Kol Ami - Salt Lake City, Utah
Israel reaches the age of maturity - Yom Kippur 5768
(c) 2007, Rabbi Tracee Rosen. All rights reserved.
Two weeks ago when religious school started, I had the opportunity to visit a number of classes to welcome the kids back to school, and to blow shofar for them in preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Right after school, a curious 5nd grader came up to me and started asking me a bunch of questions.
"Rabbi, there's something I can't figure out."
"What's that?"
"Well, my teacher said the Children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, right?"
"That's right."
"And the Children of Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years?"
"Right."
"And the Children of Israel built the Temple in Jerusalem?"
"Yes."
"And the Children of Israel fought the Babylonians and the Romans?"
"Correct."
"So, what I can't figure out is what were the grown-ups doing all that time?"
As a child of Israel, or more appropriately as someone who does not remember a world in which there was no State of Israel, it amazes me to think that in the year I was born, Israel as a State was only celebrating its Bar Mitzvah year. It was a young country, full of risk and uncertainty, and yet overflowing with boundless optimism, energy, and the promise of new possibilities in its future, just like any young adolescent. In the forty six years since then, much has changed.
There is a section in rabbinic wisdom literature known as Pirkey Avot, the Ethics of our Sages, which describes a Jewish view of the lifecycle:
By Jewish tradition, then, this year is the year that Israel attains full maturity, and I want to spend some time this (morning/afternoon) exploring the implications of this for the country, and for us as American Jews.
I.There are many ways that Israel is maturing as a country. One of the most obvious is economically and technologically.
When I first visited Israel, nearly 30 years ago, it was like jumping back in time 5-10 years from American standards. Private telephones were rare, people shared phones with their neighbors, and even if you could afford it, there was a 6-12 month wait for the phone company to install one. The only people who owned their own automobiles were the very wealthy and taxicab drivers, who made up about 10% of the population. Televisions were luxury items, subject to outrageous luxury taxes, but no one really wanted a tv, there were only 2 state-owned television stations, and they were still broadcasting in black and white. There were no bowling alleys, ice-skating rinks, or golf courses. For entertainment, people flocked to movie houses, live concerts, and dropped in unannounced on family and neighbors.
Today, Israel is barely distinguishable from any other industrialized first-world country. Israel currently ranks fifth in the world in cell phones per capita, with 1.2 phones per person (the U.S. ranks 56th). Advance computer technology, high speed internet service and cable television, are all readily available. In fact many of the technology innovations we take for granted were first developed in one of Israel's many research and development centers. Israeli biotech companies lead the world in advancing the state-of-the art health care, including significant progress using embryonic stem cell research. Private ownership of automobiles is rampant as high real estate prices force more and more citizens to the Israeli equivalent of the suburbs.
Of course there is a price to pay for all that progress. Violent crime rates have risen dramatically, Israelis are more likely to isolate from neighbors, and we know that even during the worst years of the intifada, people were still four times more likely to be injured or die in car accidents than in terrorist attacks.
II.There is also a certain amount of political maturity that seems to come with the territory. Forty years ago, as Israel was emerging from its teens, it undertook a pre-emptive strike against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and though vastly outnumbered, inflicted serious casualties, and dramatically changed the geographical map of Israel for years to come., Israel, like David in the Bible had conquered the Goliath of the surrounding countries. Suddenly, in America and all around the world, it was cool to be Jewish, and Israel became an instant source of great pride. The situation was framed in very black and white language: good guys and bad guys, us and them. They wanted to destroy us, and we just wanted a little piece of land to ensure Jewish survival in case another madman like Hitler ever made an appearance on the world stage.
In forty years so much has changed. While Israel still remains the only true democratic state in the Middle East, it is no longer the primary focus of world attention in the way that it once was. Concerns over Iraq and Iran have both eclipsed the Israel-Palestinian conflict in global attention. We have learned, especially in the past six years that not all Arab governments are created the same. Who would have ever expected to hear the term, "Moderate Arab State" as a term with any real meaning? And yet we have learned that there are major differences between different kinds of Arab governments. In the past few years we've seen the unfathomable destruction wreaked by fundamentalist Islamists, who are so driven by religious-based hatred for the infidel, that they have lost any ability to act in rational self-interest, and happily sacrifice their own civilians and children for their holy war. By comparison, the autocratic regimes of oil-enriched tribal lords, display remarkable flexibility and pragmatism when it comes to doing those things that will keep them entrenched in power. The latter, of course, are those whom we now refer to as "moderates," as indeed they are compared to the Islamists.
So, for Israel these days, part of growing up means recognizing that sometimes we have to deal with people whom we don't trust, or about whom we have our suspicions, because they are better than the alternatives. In a neighborhood where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad convenes a worldwide summit of Holocaust deniers, and where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declares that he wished all Jews would move to Israel, so it would save him the trouble of hunting us down later, even Fatah and the PLO start looking moderate.
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority comes across an authentic moderate, despite the fact that he wrote his PhD dissertation on The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement. A founding member of Fatah, the lead group of the PLO, he nonetheless was known for being a pragmatist, advocating to no avail for Palestinian recognition of Israel's sovereignty as early as the 1970s.
Just yesterday, quoted in the New York Times about the prospect for renewed negotiations with Israel, Mr. Abbas said. "We believe that the time is ripe for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and for living side by side in security and tranquillity with the State of Israel." In many ways, a remarkable statement, that is reflective of a strange new reality which Mr. Abbas's own self interest is closely aligned with Israeli interests as together they confront the radical militants of Hamas ensconced in power in Gaza.
III.And speaking of "strange bedfellows," there is another phenomenon in Israel's external relationships that has left a lot of American and Israeli Jews scratching their heads. I'm speaking, of course, about this growing phenomenon of Christian Zionists. Those of us in Utah are aware of the early and strong support that the LDS church has given to Jewish settlement of the Holy Land, but many of us have been rather skeptical of the claim of right-wing Christian evangelicals to being lovers of Zion, and lovers of the Jewish state.
The way I learned it, was that evangelicals, waiting for the imminent second coming of Jesus, believed that the Jews needed to be in the land of Israel in order for Armageddon to take place, at which point, all the believing Christians would ascend to heaven in a process called, the rapture, and the rest of the unsaved souls who were left behind would battle it out in the final global conflict. After that, whatever Jews were left would, of course, convert to Christianity. Or something like that. In any case, their scenario didn't seem to bode well for the Jews, and that kind of theology makes a lot of us uncomfortable.
Not to mention the fact that mainstream American Jewry and the evangelical Christian right-wing hardly see eye-to-eye on most of the social issues on today's political agenda, including a woman's right to control her body, stem cell research, and equal rights for gays and lesbians, to name a few.
So, it was with a lot of wariness that earlier this year, I agreed to meet with representatives from an organization named Christians United for Israel along with other leaders of the Utah Jewish community. The executive director of this group, David Brog, is a nice Jewish boy, member of a Conservative synagogue in Washington, D.C., and a former chief of staff to Senator Arlen Spector, and he has written a book about his own investigation into this phenomenon of Christian Zionism called, Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State.
I'm not going to go into great detail here about the theology underlying the evangelical position, other than to say that American evangelical Christianity has a long history of rejecting, what's called "replacement theology," which was a long-standing belief in the Catholic and many mainstream Protestant churches, that God's covenant with the Jewish people had been replaced by the new covenant, or New Testament of the Christian church. It is the cornerstone of most Christian forms of antisemitism.
Instead, since the early 1800s, there have been break-away groups from the mainstream churches which have preached that since the Bible is true in its most literal sense, and that since God's word is eternal, therefore, God still maintains a special relationship with the Jewish people, and the words of God's covenant with Abraham, "I will bless those that bless you, and curse those who curse you," remains true to this day.
This rejection of replacement theology was commonly found among individuals and even communities who resisted the Nazi's during World War II and became the righteous gentiles who risked their own lives to save their Jewish neighbors.
Pastor John Hagee, a prominent televangelist from Austin, Texas, writes the following: "During the Holocaust, too many Christians were silent, and we were left to mourn the slaughter of 6 million Jews. Today, Bible-believing Christians must speak up and stand up for Israel. We must act to do whatever we can to protect Israel's 6 million Jews from the second Holocaust. We must get it right this time. Our faith demands it. The times require it. Silence is not an option."
And today, this theology is shared by a significant number of the 26-29% of the U.S. population that self-identifies as evangelical or born-again. This plays out in a lot of different ways. Pastor Hagee started an annual program called "A Night to Honor Israel," in Austin in 1981 after Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant and was being condemned for it around the world. In the last two years, over 50 of these nights to honor Israel have been held around the country, and millions of dollars have been raised and donated to Israeli charities.
Christian pilgrims have outnumbered Jewish tourists to Israel consistently, even during the worst years of the intifada. The Israeli Ministry of Tourism has begun targeted outreach to them because it is good for the Israeli economy.
And these folks are beginning to lobby in Washington on behalf of Israel. It took AIPAC, the American Israel Public Action Committee 30 years of organizing to be able to bring 5,000 members to Washington for its annual conference. In its second year of existence, Christians United for Israel brought 4,500 people to Washington to lobby Congress on behalf of Israel.
I tell you this, not because I want to advertise for these people, but because I, too, was mistrustful of their motives, and having read and studied more about them, I am convinced that they are acting out of motives driven by a theology that I reject, but coming from a place of honesty and integrity. Israel is beginning to realize that on the issue of Zionism and the safety and security of the Jewish state, these are true and increasingly powerful allies. It is time for American Jews to re-evaluate our relationship with these groups, if only on this single topic on which we agree.
As for the rest of their social and political views, well, a lot of us are uncomfortable with them, but real interfaith dialogue and cooperation can only happen if we are willing to sit at the table with those who profess views and beliefs radically different from ours. It's something I think each of us needs to think through on our own, and come to our own decisions.
V.Israel has indeed reached the age of maturity, and with that maturity comes many blessings and many, many challenges. Maturity is a time of greater ambiguity, fewer clear-cut, black-and-white answers, and more need for compromises and dealing with people, organizations, and nations that we'd prefer not to deal with. The Children of Israel may have had God on their side during their biblical sojourns. Today's Grownups of Israel, don't have such a clear path. And yet, we maintain our hope that our beloved State will navigate these and so many other challenges with wisdom, and perhaps a little guidance from above, so that 60 years from now, we can gather together (well, the some of our younger ones) to celebrate that ideal age, ad meah v'esrim, till 120 years.
Happy birthday, Medinat Yisrael. L'chaim, To Life!