Rabbi Brant Rosen: Rethinking Israel-Palestine

My friend and colleague, Rabbi Brant Rosen has been breaking new ground over the last week. Although there have been several Jewish clergy who have taken on Israel/Palestine issues, Rabbi Rosen's stand is significant because of his role as rabbi of a large congregation. He has succeeded in doing his work while maintaining the intricate web of relationships that sustain a community.
He was the first rabbi I saw to openly address the Palestinian nakba (the Palestinian experience of dispossession and exile as a direct consequence of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948) and publicly refusing to participate in the community-wide Israel Solidarity Day.

Rabbi Rosen is in the middle of a remarkable congregational trip to Israel/Palestine. Instead of the usual, Israeli-Jewish tour guide covering the standard Israeli Zionist narrative, his trip is led by a Jewish-Palestinian tourism agency. You can read a fascinating diary of Rabbi Rosen's Israel-Palestine trip on his blog Shalom Rav.

There are many local coexistence programs in Israel-Palestine. This is a wonderful way for American Jews to support these local efforts, and, at the same time to construct a new, Jewish-American narrative for  Israel that acknowledges Palestine. We can help realize the vision for coexistence in Israel-Palestine by supporting the pioneers and by rethinking our received beliefs on the history of Israel-Palestine.

When I moved to the States some 12 years ago people here were largely ignorant of the issues. In 2000, I addressed a skeptical Jewish audience trying to convince them of settler violence against Palestinians on the West Bank. We have come a long way since then.  But, at the same time, for American Jews, Israel is  still a very difficult topic. At a time when Jews are avoiding the divisive topic of Israel, Rabbi Rosen is engaging fully with the issues and opening up the conversation in the American Jewish community.

Yishar koach!

With Rabbi Brant Rosen (at a worker justice rally in Chicago in the summer)

1968: Destruction in Chicago and the Birth of West Bank Settlements - Part 2

The formula, "Israel needs our sympathy because they live in a tough neighborhood" is now standard rhetoric for Israeli Prime Ministers and the U.S. administration. I did a Google search for: Israel "tough neighborhood" and got back over 28,000 hits.

The story of mass Jewish migration to America is one that is, by now, 2, 3 or more generations removed from the present. The story of the old life in Europe  has been romanticized in literature and musicals. The harsh story of the early years in America have been sanitized in museums and stories. But the collapse of the formerly Jewish neighborhoods in several U.S. cities shaped the lives of a whole generation of people who are alive and active today. They left an unhealed scar on the psyche of American Jews.

As an American-Israeli, I find it curious that America's cities erupted simultaneously with the birth of  West Bank settlements. Martin Luther King's assassination at the beginning of April 1968 triggered these riots. At the same time, Rabbi Moshe Levinger, student of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, spiritual father of West Bank settlements (whom I wrote about here) moved into the West Bank Palestinian city of Hebron to celebrate Passover. For the past 42 years, Hebron has been one of the focal points of state-sponsored settler violence against Palestinians and emblematic of Israel's program for the West Bank including constant violence, intimidation, vastly unequal control of resources, curfews,  occasional extra-judicial killings and impunity for Jewish thugs. Rabbi and Mrs. Levinger set the tone for Hebron and for the entire movement.

It's baffling to me how liberal American including the Jews who supported desegregation and equal rights for all American continue to support these policies against Israel's non-Jews.

I am suggesting that while Jews overwhelmingly moved into more affluent neighborhoods, they carried with them the fear of "white flight." Israel occupied the space in the American Jewish psyche of a "safe haven" and simultaneously, of a dangerous place that needs our protection.

Israel occupies the "tough neighborhood" that America's Jews left behind. Therefore, so the thinking goes, it's up to us to support those Jews who were left behind in the neighborhood.

Beryl Satter's book is so valuable because, by re-examining the American Jewish narrative about white flight, we can also begin to re-think American Jewish attitudes towards Israel.

1968: Destruction in Chicago and the Birth of West Bank Settlements - Part 1

                                                            

Martin Luther King addressing a crowd about school segregation

Chicago - July, 1965

        
Where did all the Jewish lefties go? Jews feature prominently in the annals of American socialism and progressive activism. From Emma Lazarus to Saul Alinsky, from the sweatshops of the Lower East Side to the communes of the 60s, Jews were at the forefront of progressive politics.
Much has been written about the Jewish neocons and about how success has moved Jews to the right.
One of the unhealed wounds in the Jewish narrative is the exodus to the suburbs in the 50s and 60s. The so-called "white flight" from America's cities involved Jews in a particular way. Rabbi Robert Marx, a well-known progressive activist in Chicago from that era (and beyond) recommended Dr. Beryl Satter's book, "Family Properties" to me. She is an historian. Her book is well written and is thoroughly researched. But this book also reads like a thriller. Dr. Satter follows the trail of her father, an activist lawyer and landlord on Chicago's West Side who died prematurely of stress-related heart disease. Satter tries to piece together her father's life, tracking how he became the victim of his own idealism and circumstances.

What I found compelling about the book was how she depersonalizes loaded issues. Satter describes how individuals became enmeshed in much greater forces, particularly institutional racism. During the 50s and 60s, federal agencies regulated a racist system against Blacks. This took decades to undo.  Anecdotally, my experience is that Jews tend to remember Black violence and the destruction of solid, middle class by Black homeowners and tenants. Satter shows how Whites' collective memory of the inner city riots is highly selective. Whites do not remember the extensive, officially tolerated White attacks on Blacks. Rampaging white hordes received police protection as Blacks were intimidated and Black property was attacked. A universal principle applies here. Just as in Israel/Palestine and British Raj India, the onus of non-violence was placed entirely on the oppressed minority. Any occurrence of Black violence dominates our memories. All the White violence - which was far more prevalent and was backed by racist government and business policies - was deleted from the White narrative.
Rabbi Marx tells me how anti-Semitism played into the tragedy that Whites know as "white flight." The WASP establishment knowingly directed the Black migration from the South to Jewish neighborhoods such as Lawndale on the West Side of Chicago. Their assumption was that Jews were the only minority that would tolerate racial integration. This brought Blacks and Jews into conflict. Jews became the interface between the African-Americans and non-Black Chicago.

The most inflammatory federal policy was the infamous "redlining." A neighborhood block had to be 100% White to receive the highest credit rating. As soon as one Black family moved in, the entire block was downgraded. Entire communities of White lower middle class Catholics saw their hard-earned equity evaporate overnight. The so-called "blockbusters" who brought in Black families to White blocks were vilified by the White community.

Westlawn and other West Side and South Side neighborhoods became almost 100% African-American in a few years. Jews fled northward to the north side of Chicago and to the far north suburbs of the city.

Chicago 1968 riots

The climax was 1968, with the the assassination of Martin Luther King. King had moved from Alabama to Chicago in 1965 from Alabama to establish a base for the northern States. His assassination in April 1964 triggered massive riots hat lasted for days. Mayor Daley called in thousands of national guardsman. 28 city blocks were destroyed in the fired and violence. The physical scars are visible to this in the city's vacant lots. Lawndale was etched in White consciousness as a place too dangerous to visit.

For Jews (and other White people), the memory of that time shaped their relationship to the city as they escaped from the city's melting pot to White suburbia.

In part 2, I will suggest how the Jews flight from the city has shaped American Jewish attitudes to Israel.

Israeli Messianic Judaism

How did the West Bank settlements become the national project of the State of Israel?

On 5/5/05, in honor of Israel's Independence Day , the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a list of the top 10 people who made Israel what it is today. Predictablye, David Ben Gurion comes in first. Yizhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat are also in the top 10. There is one rabbi in the listL Zvi Yehuda Hacohen Kook. He comes in after Yasser Arafat and ahead of Golda Meir.

                      

Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Hacohen Kook (1891-1982) was the father of the settlement movement. The paradox that he advocated was a. the State of Israel is the fulfillment of God's redemption and ushers in a Messianic age and b. his followers should violate the State's laws in building Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. His followers became the founders of the West Bank settlement project. Many of them are still public figures on the West Bank and Israel.

In preparing for a class I'm teaching next semester I did some research on the origins of Kook's settler movement. It started with Zvi Yehuda's father, Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook (piling on the names must run in the family). Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook was the rabbi of generation of Israel's founding fathers (the so-called second wave of immigration). He negotiated the divide between traditional Judaism and political Zionism. He was ideologically committed to the Zionist project. He parted company with his fellow traditionalists in conferring rabbinic blessing on the young anti-clerical - often anti-religious - Zionists.

                                                                  

                                                        Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook (1865 - 1935)

The outbreak of WWI left A.I. Kook stranded in London. This is what he had to say about the Great War in his essay, "Days of Battle" published in "The Vision of Redemption" (1941)

(The translations are mine. In a time of the revival of the Hebrew language, Kook's prose was particularly creative. He writes elsewhere how he strives for a (kabbalistic) transcendence through language. I've toned it down a bit in the English.)

When there is a great war in the world, the Messiah's power quickens. "The time of the songbird is nigh" (Song of Solomon 2:13). The song of the evil tyrants is eradicated (lit. the pruning of the evil tyrants is at hand) and the world breathes. "and the sound of the turtledove is heard in the land." The individuals who die an unjust death in the violent upheaval of war possess the quality of the righteous, whose death is an atonement. Their souls ascend in the root of life. Their very lives bring goodness and blessing to the greater good of the new world that is being built. The presence of the Messiah becomes more apparent. As extensive and devastating as the war is so is the depth of yearning for the appearance of the Messiah. (p. 121)

Later in the book, Kook answers a question from a devout Jew whether he could collaborate with the (secular) Jewish National Fund. The question centers on the JNF's desecration of the Sabbath by conducting land purchases on Saturdays.

Kook reviews some Talmudic material on the importance of Jewish ownership of land in the Land of Israel. Then he writes:

The JNF's mission is to to purchase properties in the Land of Israel, to transfer them away from non-Jewish ownership to Jewish. This is defined under the religious requirement to occupy the Land which is equal in significance to all the other commandments. The proof is that the Torah requires us to engage in this commandment even by waging war. Naturally, lives are always lost in war. The Torah says of all the other commandments, "that one may live by them." Not so in relation to occupying the Land. While we are not currently engaged in occupying the land by force, we are enjoined to invest all our efforts in occupying the Land through transactions.

The suspension of all law for one redemptive act, and the atoning power of the death of the innocent echo another Jewish Messianic movement: Christianity. Other Jewish Messianic movements in history similarly placed the Messianic idea ahead of all Judaism. The 17th century Shabtai Zvi is a notable example.

The suspension of all of Judaism for reclaiming the Land foreshadows one disturbing aspect of American Judaism. For many Jewish organizations there is no dogma other than Zionism. A Jew can reject God, not observe any of the basic Jewish commandments and still be a Jew in good standing, but if you reject Zionism, your risk rejection by the Jewish community.

Kook's glorification of violence is deeply troubling. To this day, echoes of the debate between Kook and the traditionalist Jerusalem rabbis who rejected Zionism continue to be relevant.

Why the Israeli leadership and public adopted the Kook program is a separate question. Haaretz's readers got it right. Undoubtedly, the Kook ideology has made Israel what it is today. It has also shaped mainstream American Judaism.
                                                                  

Zvi Yehuda Hacohen Kook with Ariel Sharon, the West Bank settlements spiritual and political architects respectively, planting a tree at the settlement of Elon Moreh, near Nablus, 1974.

Jews Against Settlements In Support of BDS

When I was a reservist for the Israeli military, I avoided serving on the West Bank by using a simple ruse. Reservists who did not served the requisite number of days in their units were sent to do guard duty on settlements. I didn't want to risk my life for settlers. Some soldiers chose to become conscientious objectors and  were locked up in the stockade. I didn't want to go to jail. Instead, each year, some time in January or February,  I'd call up my unit CO, who was a friend, and asked him to get me on the roster for a couple of weeks earlier in the year. Chalking up a few weeks in my home unit kept me off the West Bank list.

Since moving to the States, I have been careful not to buy Israeli settler products. And so, I was delighted when Jewish Voice for Peace declared its support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) program. This is a non-violent way for people around the world to express their values by refusing to purchase settler products. Particularly for Jews, this is a great way for us to support Israeli activists in forging relationships with Palestinians. This is another building block in creating the future just, Israeli-Palestinian civil society.

For a clear exposition of the BDS strategy, watch this video with JVP director, Rebecca Vilkomerson:

Jews, Israel and the Generation Gap

In the Jewish community there is nothing more consensus-building (if you agree) or divisive (if you don't) than Israel. Fundraising and community building are programmed around Israel. Jews identify Israel as central to their Jewishness and are seen as representing Israel by everyone else. Yet no subject in the Jewish community raises hackles the way Israel. No subject wrecks family dinners, starts synagogue quarrels or sours friendships like Israel.

I think there is a silver lining and have written about it here.

Yet, some of these fault lines can be anticipated. There are some opinions that are associated reliably with certain groups:

1) "We need a Jewish state as an insurance policy in case anti-Semitism erupts in the U.S."

2) "We should only air our differences among Jews. We should not expose our divisions to outsiders." 

3) "I'm Jewish and I'm American."

I hear the first two the whole time from people who are the same age as the State of Israel, or older. People in the 60s and up. I have never head someone under 40 make that argument.
In my experience #3 is meaningless to young adults today. Younger Jews do not fear anti-Semitism, they do not see Israel as a safe haven in the event of an unthinkable breakdown of American society. They see no border between Americanness and Jewishness. They take it for granted that they are full Americans and they are as Jewish as they want to be.

(My guess is that this probably does not apply in more traditional communities. These Jews maintain a deliberate separateness from mainstream America and are more connected in a variety of ways to Israeli life.)

If any of my readers has more generation gap distinctions regarding Jews and Israel, would you post them in the comments section. Thanks.

Since it doesn't look like Israel is dropping out of the headlines any time soon, and Jews will continue to be associated with Israel, it is likely that younger Jews will develop a new relationship to Israel. One that is not based on an experience of anti-Semitism or the even more distant Holocaust.

I'm hopeful that many - perhaps a new mainstream - will develop an understanding of Israel that harmonizes their Jewish soul and their human spirit.

News from the Middle East: State-Appointed Clerics Banish Religious Minorities from Cities

...or Government Employees Demand Citizens Not Rent Homes to Minorities.
...or, Public Officials in the Middle East Encourage Racist Policies

Take your pick. This is the news from Israel.
The call by a group of Israeli rabbis to ban Arabs from Jewish towns has topped the news in Israel for two days. Besides the obvious problems here, this shines a light on the troubling mixing of church and state in Israel: all the rabbis draw a government salary as municipal chief rabbis.

With 2,000 years of rabbinic rulings, it doesn't take much scholarship to cobble together a religious document like this that looks like an authentic expression of Judaism. The most senior independent Israeli rabbi, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, issued a strong statement castigating the junior government-appointed  clerics: "I have long said that some rabbis should have their pens confiscated!" Elyashiv has earned his moral clout by virtue of his scholarship, age (he's in his 90s) and independence (he's never taken state money). In the unofficial hierarchy of rabbinic leaders, he ranks as a super-authority.

Rabbi Elyashiv

Elyashiv brought to the fore a debate in the Israeli Orthodox community which is as old as Orthodoxy's engagement with political Zionism. When Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook arrived in Palestine from London, following the fall of the former Ottoman territory to the British in WWI, he quickly became rabbi to the young Jewish pioneers. This became his life work and he was rewarded with his appointment as the first chief rabbi of Palestine. The position of municipal chief rabbi can be traced to him. His brand of religious activism led his followers, and particularly his son, Zvi Yehuda Kook, to launch the settler movement in the late 60s.

Abraham Kook was opposed vehemently by the, native Jewish community of Jerusalem. This community is the spiritual ancestor of Rabbi Elyashiv.
In distancing himself from the municipal rabbis Elyashiv denounced the rulings of "Zionist rabbis." This is a loaded term. It reflects power struggles for choice government jobs in cities and state-endorsed religious courts in Israel. It also exposes an ideological divide between rabbis such as Kook who embraced Zionism as a religious movement, and the traditional camp which was deeply suspicious of the young rebels. Elyashiv's accusation that "Zionist rabbis" are the ones issuing the ban on renting Jewish homes to Arabs   is an extension of his community's worldview, that, prior to the arrival of the Zionists, Jews and Arabs lived in harmony.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu also spoke out against the rabbis, quoting from the Bible's book of Leviticus. "Thou shalt love the stranger" and "one law shalt thou have for the native-born and the stranger." Netanyahu got this one right: Judaism has always acknowledged that Jews in Israel/Palestine share the same physical space as non-Jews. There is no period in Jewish history where that has not been a focus of Jewish religious culture. From the Torah, to the later books of the Bible; from the Apocrypha to the Mishna; from the Talmud to medieval scholars and beyond, Jews have always read the Jewish domain as overlapping with the non-Jewish.

However, Israeli law belies Netanyahu's statement. The State of Israel is constituted to protect Jewish privilege. The Basic Laws, building blocks of Israel's future constitution guarantee Jewish primacy in land use, citizenship and other privileges. State institutions such as the Jewish National Fund and the Israel Lands Administration control land use by excluding non-Jews from national projects.

The rabbis' ruling is a natural outgrowth of this political culture. Netanyahu has expelled Palestinians from their East Jerusalem homes, forcefully expropriated Arab lands, and funds and encourages Jewish settlements and the dismemberment of the West Bank...why, the rabbis can reason, is their ruling crossing the line?

Rabbi Elyashiv's followers live illegally on the West Bank in Israeli-sponsored towns such as Immanuel. Why is baring Palestinians from the Orthodox town of Bnei Berak worse than illegally settling in the Palestinian territories?

I'm glad Netanyahu and Elyashiv spoke out against the racist rabbis. But, if they want to quote the Biblical injunction that all - Jew and non-Jew - are equal before the law with integrity, they need to do their house cleaning first