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Can't we all get along? |
Saturday, June 5, 1999 Israel: Take I So. Let's get back to putting out pieces of the religion puzzle. Israel. The Promised Land. The Land Flowing with Milk and Honey, and -- these days -- supplied with a Falafel Shop on Every Corner. As a public service, I hereby present a complete summary of absolutely everything that the various Jewish denominations and groups can agree on about the Land of Israel, at least officially. I include the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform movements in this, and I strongly suspect that it also applies to the Reconstructionists, but I don't know nearly enough about them to say for certain. Still, that's a pretty broad base, and you'll probably agree that it's pretty amazing that they can all come to a consensus about this. Ready? Here goes: The Complete List of Statements About Israel All Jews Can Agree On:
You didn't really expect anything longer, did you? Come on, as the saying goes, when you put two Jews in a room, you get three opinions, and that's certainly true here. There are those who feel that living in Israel is a religious obligation, and that living anywhere else is morally questionable. There are those who feel that creating a Jewish-run state in Israel is absolutely forbidden until the Messiah comes. There are those who feel that Zionism is a fundamental pillar of the religion, and those who feel it's the biggest threat to the religion. Those who feel the founding of the State of Israel was the greatest event of the century, if not the millennium; those who feel the founding of the State of Israel wasn't such a great idea, but now that it's here, we'd better support it; and those who feel that the State of Israel needs to be dismantled at all costs. And all of this is just amongst the Orthodox. All of whom agree that, eventually, the Messiah will show up, and all the Jews will return to Israel, and the Temple will be rebuilt, and everybody will live happily ever after, although not necessarily in that order. But until then... well, that's where the differences of opinion come in. So, no, it ain't simple.
That, however, is okay. Because while there may be some minor disagreements in theory, in practice, everybody living there is able to put this sort of philosophical stuff behind them, and live together in peace, harmony, and serenity, calmly accepting one another's differences in a laid-back, reasonable fashion. And-- I'm sorry; I can't keep a straight face anymore. No, if you believe that last paragraph, then you might also be interested in purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge. I know the guy who has the deed to it, and I can get it for you really cheap. Honest! No, what drove me up the wall about Israel -- or, rather, Jerusalem, which is where I spent the overwhelming majority of my time -- was the utter polarization of everybody there. Simply put, everybody's part of one group or another, and none of said groups really get along with each other. If New York is a melting pot, then Jerusalem is a ceramic mosaic, in which all the tiles clash, and have lots of jagged edges. This is not, I might add, confined to any one sector; as far as I could tell, it held true for the religious, the non-religious, and the anti-religious, not to mention the other religions. Every few blocks is an utterly different neighborhood, really. And people are tense.
I may already have spun the whole situation the wrong way. There are so many factors involved in the situation in Israel that to start with any one of them unfairly downplays other, equally important factors. Fact is, the fundamental thing to keep in mind about Israel may very well be the fact that it has either been at war, or pretty damn close to it, for over fifty years now. That sort of thing isn't especially conducive to peace of mind amongst its populace. It's also worth noting that, by all rights, Israel shouldn't have made it through those fifty years, as, quite frankly -- and I say this as somebody who firmly resists supernatural explanations for anything -- there is no reasonable explanation for the country having survived through the wars it's been in. As a popular joke goes, it's probably the only nation in history to have defeated its opponents by surrounding them from the inside. Except that it's not really a joke. But that's not to say that the whole enterprise has been painless; far from it. Far too much blood has been spilled... which leads into the whole Arab-Israeli can of worms, and everything that comes with that. Which I'm not sure I want to get into, even though it's central.
See, it's like this: After returning from Israel the second time, in 1996, I continued following the news from the country, reading the main stories about it on Yahoo! News' feed from Reuters, until, somewhere along the line -- shortly after the incident with the new opening for the tunnel in the Old City, if I recall correctly -- I finally hit "tilt," and all but stopped following any of the news from Israel. It was just too painful, too depressing. And while I now read the occasional story -- and actually did some research after the latest elections, to find out more about the results -- I still haven't been up to following it very closely at all. Which is not to say I don't care about the country. Well, no, strike that-- I don't. I couldn't care less about the State. The people in it are another story, though. Frankly, my best-case scenario would be one in which the State was disbanded, the government was turned over to the Palestinians, and the Jews and the Arabs went on to live together in peace and harmony therein. It's an utterly impossible vision, and not one I'm seriously advancing, but the point is that my priorities lie with the lives of the people -- Jewish and Arab -- and not with land ownership. See, I have family there. My younger brother lives there with his wife, as do quite a few first cousins of mine. Add in extended family, and, well, I have a bit of an emotional stake in the place, yes. Now consider what it's like for the people who actually live there. Now add in family members lost in military acts and terrorist actions, and the attendant desire for revenge, objectification of the enemy, and lack of trust in a peaceful solution. Like I said, they're tense.
But once again, I'm rambling. There's just too much to tackle. I'll try to be more coherent in the next entry in the series.
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