Creative Aging: Moving Between Labels

Editor’s note: Seventh in a series

It happened about 20 years ago at a Peace Now conference in Jerusalem. During the sessions, it became clear to me that many of the Americans were there first and foremost because they defined themselves primarily as leftist activists. Israel was just another cause inside their framework. At that moment I realized I was different. I was there because  I primarily identified as a Jew and Zionist and that my political beliefs fell inside that overall frame. I believed that Peace Now was offering the best path towards my priority of a vibrant and secure Israel. And in many instances, I still do. 

But what might seem like a small understanding has made a huge difference in my life, particularly now when the political stakes in both Israel and America have become so exacerbated. Today, we Jews have to ask ourselves if our most pressing identity is only our political one. Have we in the process lost our umbrella identity as a Jewish community, connecting to one another?”

I know that even asking these questions flies in the face of my liberal colleagues who often ask me if I am no longer a liberal. I tell them I am. But I consider myself to be a sane, balanced liberal, who is fighting liberal tyranny as much as I am right wing extremist tyranny. Then they raise eyebrows and chant at me the oft-repeated dictum, “Everything is political.”

But maybe, just maybe, everything isn’t political? Maybe in the Jewish world, it’s about the Jewish people, first. And maybe it’s about our need to find some common ground? To listen to each other? To figure out how we can disagree and still share the same plate of hummus?  Maybe it’s about both sides reaching across the aisle? Or should I say across the sea, and how we march together to the other side, finding some way to dance to the timbrels, instead of demonizing one another. It doesn’t mean there aren’t standards and everything is acceptable. But maybe we liberals have to liberalize, and the conservatives have to do their part to conserve Jewish unity.

Too idealistic? 

I believe, “Everything is vision.” Vision is risk.  You never accomplish it all. But you get a lot further down the line than you do without a big, impossible-to-imagine vision. 

I calmed down as I got older. I became secure enough to ask questions I would have never dared raise before, because I wanted so much to be an accepted, loyal part of the movement. 

I couldn’t question like this when I was younger. Too much testosterone. I calmed down as I got older. I became secure enough to ask questions I would have never dared raise before, because I wanted so much to be an accepted, loyal part of the movement. With that came the consciousness that I no longer wanted to live in an echo chamber, surrounded only by people I agree with. I’m curious as to what different people think and why.  I choose now as my first priority to be building bridges rather than building bigger and better weapons to lob at the other side. I’m an addicted CNN watcher, but do I dare admit so publicly that I also occasionally switch to Fox News to hear what they’re saying? I know what I believe and where I stand,  but I want to question everyone’s orthodoxy, both on the left and right. And for sure, my own. 

So much so, that I now go to multiple synagogues. One is highly politically challenging, but at times spouting such a consistent extreme liberal dogma that it can steamroll your brain leaving only its very left-thinking ventricle.  The other is apolitical, balanced, sweet, warm and embracing. I need both. And then, there is my local Chabad shul. And my neighborhood Israeli Mizrachi synagogue.  I need people from all those sides around me to feel part of this diverse and fascinating Jewish community. 

If we Jewish liberals are advocating for peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, does that principle not apply to the left and right in America and among Jews themselves? Do the right wing believers in our community have no desire to bridge that gap, either? 

At this stage of my life, I have seen enough to know that neither side wins for long. It all moves back and forth. I still want to fight for what I believe is right, but today I want to do it within the framework of Jewish unity. 

Writing regularly for the Jewish Journal, puts me exactly where I want to be. Surrounded by Jews of many different experiences, backgrounds and opinions,  reflecting how the diverse Jewish people can at times exist on the same page.

Gary Wexler woke up one morning and found he had morphed into an old Jewish guy.