{"id":15835,"date":"2024-05-03T07:42:34","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T04:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=15835"},"modified":"2024-07-07T13:41:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-07T10:41:43","slug":"%d7%9e%d7%94%d7%99-%d7%9e%d7%93%d7%99%d7%a0%d7%94-%d7%99%d7%94%d7%95%d7%93%d7%99%d7%aa-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/%d7%9e%d7%94%d7%99-%d7%9e%d7%93%d7%99%d7%a0%d7%94-%d7%99%d7%94%d7%95%d7%93%d7%99%d7%aa-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Jewish State?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong>Countless layers of Jewish-Israeli existence accumulated during the seventy-five years of the state’s independence, and in fact began to form years before its establishment. Every moment of Israel’s happening contains all the DNA of the twisted, vibrant and turbulent expression of the Jewish state known as the State of Israel.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The answer to the complicated question in the title of this piece seems plain: the entity in which Israeli citizens \u2013 both Jews and Arabs \u2013 live today, is a Jewish state. It contains a decisive Jewish majority that mostly perceives the state as the Jewish people\u2019s national home. It is largely organized by the Jewish calendar (the national day of rest is Saturday\u2014the Jewish Sabbath; Jewish holy days and memorial days are national holidays). The dominant language is Hebrew, the language of the Bible, in which the Jewish people\u2019s identity is couched.<\/p>\n

Countless layers of Jewish-Israeli existence have amassed over the state\u2019s seventy-five years of independence, and in fact began to form years before its establishment. They include, of course, the complex relationship between the Jewish-Israeli majority and the Arab-Israeli minority. Each moment of Israel\u2019s occurrence contains the entire DNA of the convoluted, vibrant, turbulent manifestation of the Jewish state known as the State of Israel.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

But wait, haven\u2019t we forgotten something?<\/p>\n

The almost complete indifference of most Israelis to the occupation of the Palestinian people and its land, an occupation that has lasted for over fifty-five years, is a substantial component in the formation of Israel\u2019s identity. To be clear: Israel does not bear sole responsibility for the absence of any true and courageous effort to resolve the conflict over the past few decades. Serious errors on the part of both the Palestinians and the Israelis have led to what now seems like a dead-end. But today, as we celebrate Israel\u2019s 75th<\/sup> year, an occasion that invites both marveling and reckoning, we must examine whether the term \u201cJewish state\u201d can, and may, disregard the occupation. Furthermore, we must question whether the enormity of ignoring the occupation and erasing it from Israeli consciousness can itself be disregarded.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation.\u201d That, as many readers know, is what we Israelis call our relationship with the Palestinians. It is our name for the decades-long bloodshed, the wars and \u201coperations\u201d whose hunger is never sated, the occupation, the resistance to it, the construction of settlements, the trespassing\u2014in every sense of the word\u2014and the terrorism.<\/p>\n

Most people who were born into \u201cthe situation\u201d and have lived their whole lives in it have long given up hope that it may ever be resolved. They are paralyzed by its complexities: the infinite circularity, the inevitability of violence and counter-violence, the hollow slogans employed in endless retellings of the history, the way authentic human stories are turned into a manipulative \u201cnarrative,\u201d the affront to those whose life essence is reduced to clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n

We who were born into \u201cthe situation\u201d have accepted that our children and our children\u2019s children are doomed to live by the sword\u2014and often, to die by it. We already know that might is no guarantee of victory. That every sword is a double-edged sword. We know, yet we turn a blind eye to the knowledge. We burrow deeper and deeper into ourselves and surrender to apathy and fatalism, to the consolations found in religion, to the self-aggrandization offered by nationalism. We seek comfortable, accessible escapes, rising stars that shimmer before our glazed eyes, anything to distract us from the terrifying, destabilizing questions posed by the conflict.<\/p>\n

To those observing us, we appear increasingly passive, emotionally \u201cneutralized\u201d (another horrific word in the language of conflict). But the chasm between ourselves and the reality generated by the conflict does not remain a void: it is constantly being filled by a flow of extremist, nationalistic, and fundamentalist forces. These forces do everything, and stop at nothing, to impose their agenda on the frightened, paralyzed majority.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is dangerous to talk of a state\u2019s or nation\u2019s \u201ccharacteristics,\u201d but one can talk of acts and procedures. A clear example is what is referred to as \u201cthe settlement enterprise,\u201d a reality-generating process that has transformed Israel. This process\u2014geographic, political, military, and above all, psychological\u2014was meant from the start to sabotage the chances of establishing fair, mutually accepted borders for the state, and thereby thwarted and continues to thwart a stable peace accord that would determine Israel\u2019s fate. In a similar mode, the Jewish religion itself\u2014for decades, but primarily since the Six-Day War\u2014has wound itself around Israeli politics so tightly that it can no longer be unraveled.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even after 75 years of independence, Israel has no permanent, accepted borders. Since earliest days, time after time, the state\u2019s borders have shrunk and expanded due to wars and operations, withdrawals and occupations, and various agreements. A state that lacks agreed upon borders exists in a perpetual, dangerous tension: between the temptation to invade its neighbors and the fear of being invaded by them. This constant tension, this existential uncertainty, makes Israel feel a little less like home and a little more like a fortress. It also determines the nature of the Jewish state today.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Judaism I connect with is secular and humanist. It has faith in human beings. The only thing it holds sacred is human life. Those who believe in it arrive through dialogue, absolutely not through coercion.<\/p>\n

There is a frequency in my mind on which I sense my belonging to the Jewish people, but also my occasional aversion to that belonging. I feel a powerful affinity with the Jewish people\u2019s destiny, as well as with its glorious and terrible history. With the Hebrew language in its various evolutions. With the rich culture it created. With its ironic, pained sense of humor.<\/p>\n

The Judaism I connect with is repelled by the euphoria and arrogance I see among certain circles in today\u2019s Judaism, and by their shackled fusions that tighten around my neck: the fusing of religion with messianism, of faith with zealotry, of the national with the nationalistic and fascistic.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation,\u201d which continues to metastasize, prompts a question about Israel\u2019s right to define itself as a democracy. An occupation regime cannot be democratic: it simply cannot. After all, democracy stems from the profound belief that all human beings are born equal, and that it is wrong to deny a person the right to participate in determining his or her own fate.<\/p>\n

Years of occupation and humiliation can create the illusion that there is a hierarchy in human value. The occupied nation is eventually perceived as existentially, innately inferior. Its misery and wretchedness are perceived by the occupier as a fate that supposedly stems from its essence. (That is how, as we know, anti-Semites have always treated Jews.) Its members are viewed as people whose human rights may be denied, whose values and desires can be disparaged. It goes without saying that the occupying nation sees itself as superior and, therefore, as innate master. In this reality, and as the influence of religion grows, there is an increasing belief that it is God\u2019s will. And it is not hard to see how, in this climate, the democratic worldview wanes.<\/p>\n

And I ask: how can those who believe man is created in God\u2019s image trample that image?<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

It seems, at present, that thinking about the occupation and its repercussions does not arouse in most Israelis even the slightest distress, not to mention guilt, about living a life of lies and repression. Through a sophisticated set of intuitions, most Israelis have learned \u201cto live with it\u201d (one is tempted to say: \u201cto filter it out\u201d). Nor has thinking about the occupation done anything to spur Israeli citizens or the majority of their leaders since 1967 to take steps that could finally begin to repair the warped situation. We\u2019ve grown accustomed to it. Furthermore, the State of Israel constructs its own image and the story it tells itself so efficiently and hermetically, that it has erected an impermeable barrier between its consciousness and reality.<\/p>\n

When Jews were dispersed among seventy diasporas, they managed to incorporate a soulful yearning for the wonderful, dreamlike Eretz Yisrael into daily lives that were often marked by deprivation and persecution. That is how Benjamin III and his friend Sendrel \u2013 the fictional characters penned by Mendele Mocher Sforim in The Travels of Benjamin III<\/em>\u2013 stand with their feet bogged down in the Diaspora while they dream of Eretz Yisrael, to which they are positive they have a claim. Very soon they will reach it, and they will fill their bellies with dates and figs, and they will find King Solomon using the legendary shamir<\/em> to cut through the stones of the First Temple. \u201cIt\u2019s all there,\u201d says Benjamin longingly, \u201cthere is all the places.\u201d<\/p>\n

This rare gift (the Fiddler on the Roof\u2019s gift) of a total belief in the power of imagination, and the ability to bargain with imagination so that it becomes reality\u2014is manifesting again today, but this time the fiddler is on a tank, and the gift is used to erase from our minds the existence of another nation, the humiliation and suffering that we inflict on it daily, and the inequities of the entire situation. This time, the gift helps us create amazingly sophisticated reality-bypass networks, which enable the nightmarish situation to persist, seemingly without us paying a price.<\/p>\n

In other words: imagination, that metaphysical organ that played such a decisive role in fulfilling the tremendous feat of the Return to Zion, now allows those Israelis who wish to\u2014and they are, it turns out, legion\u2014to create for themselves a picture of reality in which an entire nation\u2014millions of people whose homeland is here\u2014is missing.<\/p>\n

One of many possible answers to the question \u201cWhat is a Jewish state?\u201d is, therefore: \u201cA Jewish state is a state that is skilled at living a full, intense life with a dimension of illusion and repression, engaged in a total denial of reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Imagination fans its own flames and turns to hallucination.<\/p>\n

Hallucination becomes matter.<\/p>\n

There are those who know how to mould it to their ends.<\/p>\n

Reality becomes hallucinatory.<\/p>\n

More and more people fall captive to it.<\/p>\n

Others are unwillingly captured by it.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

But on this celebratory day, I would like to propose one more facet in the definition of a Jewish state, which, if implemented, could both strengthen Israel\u2019s Jewish identity and values, and improve its relationship with its large Palestinian minority. \u201cIf<\/em> implemented\u201d\u2014because at present it is not, or only in rare circumstances. But it is conceivable that one day, when the \u201cbig\u201d conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people is resolved, Jewish and Arab citizens of the state may find it within themselves to achieve true reconciliation as well.<\/p>\n

Part of the great, miraculous revolution of the Jewish nation\u2019s return to its homeland is that it must now learn how to be a majority<\/em>. It must heal itself from the ills of being a persecuted minority, and understand the duties of a majority toward the minorities living among it. This is not an easy exploration. It entails giving up both concrete assets and abstract ones\u2014identity and self-perception. (Giving up stereotypes and prejudices is extremely difficult.) It requires a profound change in education curricula, for example. It requires a policy of protecting minorities from the ills of racism and hate crimes.<\/p>\n

These steps have the power to create a reality that allows every person, from both the majority and the various minorities, to flourish, to feel protected, to feel represented in all systems of life and governance, to have equal rights and obligations, to live with dignity and parity\u2014both economic and cultural. They may then feel valued, and able to nurture their own communities\u2019 origin stories without erasing those of others. They may heal the wounds of past injuries contained in their roots.<\/p>\n

If these steps are taken, we will then be able to inscribe and proudly quote this verse at the entrance to the Supreme Court: \u201cYe shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for the home-born\u201d (Leviticus 24:22). And the avowed secularists among us, and the atheists, will stand at the gates of the Knesset and read with great intention, as in a secular prayer, the verse inscribed there: \u201cAnd God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them\u201d (Genesis 1:27).<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

But why suffice with repairing the state\u2019s relationship with its large national minority? Why not go further and extend the aspiration to all minorities, all disadvantaged groups, of every nation, race, and sex? Asylum seekers are also an anguished minority. Elderly people on the verge of hunger are suffering, too. As are disabled people, and those trapped under the poverty line, and Holocaust survivors. And more and more groups.<\/p>\n

You may say: What you are proposing is a welfare state; what is \u201cJewish\u201d about your vision?<\/p>\n

It is Jewish because most of these wishes, this concept of society, this worldview, have already been formulated in Hebrew, in the Bible. Moreover, as I mentioned, they will now be occurring in a state in which the Jews are the majority<\/em>. The term is used here not merely as a mathematical fact: for thousands of years, Jews lived as a minority of foreigners, subject to hatred and suspicion, in countries that almost always mistreated, persecuted and degraded them, and even attempted to annihilate them. Even in \u201cfriendly\u201d countries, the Jewish minority was in a permanent sense of instability and transience, barely tolerated by the majority. The earth constantly trembled beneath its feet, and imaginary \u201ccutting lines\u201d were always marked around it.<\/p>\n

Today, that minority is the majority, a condition that comes with a large responsibility and demands sensitivity, empathy, and an overcoming of history that I question whether we are capable of. And yet, if Israel were to implement even some of the aspirations outlined here, we could then say wholeheartedly: \u201cA Jewish state is the Jewish people\u2019s national home, and it views the full equality of all its citizens as its great human test, and as the realization of its prophets\u2019 and founders\u2019 vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Translated by Jessica Cohen<\/strong><\/p>\n

David Grossman is a writer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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