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