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Fighting for Peoplehood

It’s not fun to hear bad news on Shabbat. The whole idea of Shabbat is to take a spiritual break from the rest of the week, to reconnect with the essential stuff of life and to do it all in a spirit of joy. The last thing we need is to have our spirits brought down by depressing reminders.
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November 12, 2009

It’s not fun to hear bad news on Shabbat. The whole idea of Shabbat is to take a spiritual break from the rest of the week, to reconnect with the essential stuff of life and to do it all in a spirit of joy. The last thing we need is to have our spirits brought down by depressing reminders.

And yet, there I was last Shabbat, at Young Israel of Century, listening to a riveting sermon by Daniel Gordis on the movement to delegitimize the State of Israel.

Gordis started with the Torah portion of the week, making the connection between “place” and “nation” in the biblical story of the Jews and establishing the importance of the modern-day revival of Jewish sovereignty.

But then he quickly brought us to the reality of the moment. As he explained it, there is a movement afoot to undo the 1947 decision by the United Nations to establish the state of Israel.

“If the establishment of Israel came up for a U.N. vote today,” he said, “chances are it wouldn’t pass.”

The decision last week by the U.N. General Assembly to endorse the Goldstone report is just the latest sign of this movement, he said, because it undermines Israel’s very ability to defend itself.

Gordis is no fire-and-brimstone rabbi trying to pump up a crowd through fear and alarmism. He’s a passionate Zionist, yes, but he’s also studious and reflective. His latest book, “Saving Israel” (Wiley), is full of nuanced discussion about Israel’s complicated predicament.

He also has a big fan base in Los Angeles, where he lived for many years before immigrating to Israel with his family 11 years ago. He’s now senior vice president and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, a Zionist think tank where he heads their efforts to establish Israel’s first liberal arts college.

On Shabbat, this intellectual, who received his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California, was in no mood to play professor. His emotions were most evident when he let the second shoe of his sermon drop: his sadness that Jews are losing their sense of peoplehood, and this at a time when we really need it. We are more than a nation or a culture or a religion, he said. We are a clan, a tribe, a people.

And the best way to fight the forces that try to delegitimize Israel is to stand together as one people.

Gordis is both an idealist and a realist. He knows that nowadays, peoplehood is a tough sell. It smacks of tribalism, exclusivity, discrimination and dual loyalty. And, for many, it’s not a very sophisticated idea — not too far from the cries at Staples Center to “cheer for the home team.”

But that won’t stop the idealist in Gordis. Our sense of peoplehood is a core element of the Jewish identity, he reminded us, and it has helped sustain us through the millennia. We must find a way to revive it. He spoke as if it was a winnable fight.

Is it?

It’s hard to say. For the significant number of Jews who don’t feel a need for Jewish peoplehood in their lives — and that includes Jews from across the denominational and ideological spectrum — it will take some very clever arguments to make them feel part of a “family” with whom they have little in common except for a shared ancestry.

Gordis delved further into the nuances of the problem when he spoke on Saturday night at a private home. He acknowledged that for the notion of peoplehood to catch on, it will need to be adapted for modern realities and be reconciled with opposing notions like individual identity and ideology.

For example, how can I be a “person of the world” and also be part of the exclusive Jewish family? And if I can’t stand what you believe in, why should I be part of your family in the first place?

There are no obvious answers, but a good start, Gordis said, would be to make all Jews of good faith feel at home in the tent of Jewish peoplehood — even Jews who criticize Israeli policy.

But he also drew lines. We need to balance the ability to criticize Israel, he said, with the need to defend it. It’s one thing to have debates within our community about difficult issues; it’s another to take our critiques of Israel to Capitol Hill and turn them into a media circus.

Like he wrote last week in The Jerusalem Post, we shouldn’t censor ourselves or squelch debate, but, at the same time, we need to remember that whatever we say can and will be used against us by forces who’d love nothing more than to see us commit national suicide.

Gordis is the ultimate struggler. He’s got every side of a complicated problem dangling inside his nimble brain, yet he still aims for a message of clarity and passion.

He reached the height of clarity and passion when he spoke about the extraordinary transformation of the global Jewish community over the past 60 years and the power of Zionism to “manipulate history” and “rejuvenate the idea of hope.”

With that note of optimism, he bookended his stark morning sermon with one idea that has driven this little people forward since the days of Abraham: hope for a better future.

That’s an idea that’s always welcome on Shabbat.

David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine. You can read his daily blog at suissablog.com and e-mail him at {encode=”dsuissa@olam.org” title=”dsuissa@olam.org”}.

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