COMMENTARY: Israel: The greatest threat to Jewish continuity

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of TIKKUN magazine and author of”Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation.”He also leads San Francisco’s Beyt Tikkun congregation). UNDATED _ While the media is whooping up a storm of self-congratulation and breathless commentators compete to regurgitate the”official”view of Israel’s 50th anniversary, many American […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of TIKKUN magazine and author of”Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation.”He also leads San Francisco’s Beyt Tikkun congregation).

UNDATED _ While the media is whooping up a storm of self-congratulation and breathless commentators compete to regurgitate the”official”view of Israel’s 50th anniversary, many American Jews are far more conflicted about Israel than most are willing to admit.


Israel was created to save the Jewish people from the threats of anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust. Most Jews remain grateful Israel exists, and we will continue to do whatever we can to support Israeli security.

My own son served in the Israeli paratroopers to show his commitment to Israel’s survival. Many of us would be there in a flash if Israel were again genuinely threatened by more than horrible acts of terrorism which, while intolerable, are no real threat to Israel’s survival.

Yet, as Jewish physical survival seems increasingly assured, more and more Jews, particularly the young, are walking away from Judaism. At least one major reason is their disdain for what Israel has become and for the way Israeli policies have undermined Jewish ethical and spiritual values.

Judaism was, for most of its history, the religion of the oppressed par excellence. Judaism proclaimed its unequivocal commitment to the poor, the powerless, the stranger within our gates.

True enough, these values were not always actualized, either in ancient Israel or in the subsequent diaspora. Yet the appeal of Judaism was its unequivocal testimony to the God of transformation: the God who had brought us out of slavery and who promised a world that could be fully liberated from all forms of oppression.

It is no surprise Jews have a hard time holding on to this vision after the Holocaust. In the past 50 years many Jews who were traumatized by that experience have rejected this religious vision and become”realists,”glorifying power rather than ethics, believing Jews who suffered so much have a right to live by the same standard as everyone else: might makes right.

The result has been a colossal moral collapse inside the center of the Jewish establishment, manifested most acutely in the way it muffles criticism of Israel.


It is this moral collapse that makes possible the continuing refusal of the Jewish people to look squarely at the pain and injustice caused to Palestinians by the occupation of the West Bank and the denial of equal rights to Arabs living within Israel.

Yet recent history has shown that demeaning”the other”is a slippery slope, leading from the demeaning of Palestinians to the demeaning of Jews from Arab countries (the sephardic or mizrachi Jews), then to demeaning Ethiopian Jews, and now to the demeaning of liberal religious Jews by the Orthodox establishment.

Staying true to the God of transformation and healing should lead Jews to a Jewish religious critique of Israel’s current realities. Jews have a right to demand that a state that calls itself Jewish at least affirm a commitment to the well-being of the least powerful within it, rather than to revel in narrow chauvinism and the demeaning of others.

Yet those Jews who have articulated such arguments are accused of being”self-hating Jews”whose criticisms are signs of fundamental disloyalty. Moreover, the Jewish community as a whole continues to lie to itself about Israel, and to force American politicians to publicly affirm Israeli democracy even as massive human rights violations are documented and exposed.

Having lost faith in God, the Jewish community has worshipped Israel’s power and success. But this is not a very compelling God, particularly for many younger Jews.

Unlike previous generations who sometimes needed Jewish”connections”to advance their careers in a society suspicious if not hostile to Jews, younger Jews today can enter the professions and finance without such help. If they need religious identity at all, it is only as an alternative to the materialism and selfishness of the marketplace.


But if Judaism offers no real spiritual critique of the misuse of power and no hope for fundamental transformation, if it becomes little more than a celebration of the success of Jews in Israel and the U.S., there is little to attract the next generation.

The Israeli government’s arrogance and lack of compassion in dealing with the Palestinian people adds to the deep distaste so many young Jews feel, which they attribute to Judaism itself. So, in massive numbers they have defected.

Israel’s 50th anniversary, then, becomes a time of mixed emotions: joy at its survival, thanks for its role as a haven for homeless Jews, and yet sadness it may have begun a process ultimately leading to a more serious decline of Jewish fortune than any that our enemies have ever been able to bring us.

DEA END LERNER

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