‘It never even occurred to me that the Jews were a people.” I had just finished speaking on Shabbat morning at a traditional shul on Long Island. The talk had been about the nation-state and its roots in the Book of Genesis. Along the way, I’d made some comments about the changing nature of American Jewish life today, and the much-reduced role that peoplehood now plays in American Jews’ sense of self.

After services, someone told me that members of the liberal synagogue across the street had come to hear the talk. Ouch. I’d been rather direct about the dangers of liberal American Judaism’s diminishing the role of peoplehood in Jewish life, and worried that I might have offended the visitors.

But it turns out that they were more intrigued than anything else.

One woman said that the idea that the Jews were a people had never occurred to her. Another person remarked that peoplehood was an interesting idea, but warned that if Jews are a people, ” you’re going to cut 40% of my congregation out of the picture.”

Almost without our noticing, American Jewish life is being dramatically redefined. Especially among the young and the liberal, American Judaism is being recreated in the model of American Protestantism.

Christianity is not about peoplehood. “The Christian People” is a meaningless phrase. Judaism, like Protestantism, has become a faith system, a purely personal – and highly individual – means of constructing meaning in our world.

Judaism as a faith system, of course, is nothing new. But from time immemorial, we have also seen ourselves as a people. From the moment that Pharaoh refers to the Jews as “the people, the Children of Israel” (Exodus 1:9), it is clear even to our enemies that Abraham’s clan has morphed into a nation.

FOR MILLENNIA, rank-and-file Jews understood this. We cultivated bonds of mutual obligation, even when we profoundly disagreed, even when our faith wore thin. Kol Yisrael areivim zeh la-zeh, all Jews are responsible one for another, the tradition has long insisted.

And it actually worked. It was peoplehood that got American college students to wage a relentless battle to free Soviet Jews, with whom they had virtually nothing obvious in common.

It was due to peoplehood that IAF pilots flew converted cargo planes into an Ethiopian civil war in order to save people of a different race, a radically different faith system and virtually no shared history, bringing them to Israel in Operation Solomon.

And it is peoplehood that has continually led American Jews – despite their absolute disinterest in making aliya and their profound differences with Israel about conversion policy and the peace process – to support Israel both financially and politically.

This move away from peoplehood will continue as intermarriage becomes more common. Flourishing marriages, after all, are possible even when spouses disagree about important issues. And therefore, in the logic of young American Jews, there’s nothing terribly illogical about my choosing to spend my life with someone who’s not Jewish.

After all, on a host of issues, I have my opinions and she has hers. So, too, in religious life. I have my synagogue, she has her church. I have my holidays and she has hers. I believe my beliefs, and she has hers.

But peoplehood? If I’m a member of a people, then there’s actually a yawning chasm between us. And since she has no interest in becoming Jewish, it’s Judaism – and not she – that must change. Consciously or not, I sense that Judaism must be redefined – as a faith system, a personal odyssey, as “my Judaism,” to use a problematic phrase now popular among American Jews.

As anything but a people.

YET WITHOUT peoplehood at the core of American Jewish life, devotion to Israel becomes a choice, not an instinct, as it used to be. Young American Jews look with horror at the suffering of Palestinians, and decide that this conflict is simply not theirs.

One of the founders of Fast for Gaza (www.fastforgaza.net) wrote recently that “unlike previous generations, [today's young American Jews] don’t necessarily understand their Judaism in traditionally tribal terms anymore. Rather, they are increasingly viewing their Jewishness against a larger, more universal global reality. In short, to be a Jew and a global citizen is what gives them ‘goose bumps.’”

This writer himself admits – the new, personal, less “tribal” (i.e., less peoplehood-oriented) Judaism is more animated by global citizenship than by a sense of Jewish responsibility. (That’s why they fast for Gazans, and not for Israelis under Gaza rocket fire or for Gilad Schalit, I assume.) From afar, it would seem that there is little that Israel and Israelis can do to influence this seismic shift.

But the dangers to Israel’s security as a result of this change are obvious. Something must be done.

One idea for starters: Recent studies show that a quick trip on Birthright has lasting implications for Jewish identification, and dramatically lowers intermarriage rates, for example. It’s because in Israel, Jews encounter peoplehood, with all its problems, but also with its triumphs.

It’s time to take the Birthright concept and expand it. Two-thirds of Canadian Jews and 75 percent of Australian and French Jews have been to Israel, but about two-thirds of American Jews have never even visited. That has to change.

Even in this economy, there is more than enough American Jewish money to get the vast majority of American Jews to Israel, to witness first-hand the power of peoplehood and, perhaps, to transform the dangerous, emerging American Jewish sense that attachment to other Jews and their state is a relic of the past.

We know what’s at stake. Those people who never even imagined that Jews are a people are the men and women who in a generation will be running the federations, many of America’s synagogues and national organizations. They will be setting communal agendas and disbursing American Jews’ money. Either they will argue our case on Capitol Hill, or no one will.

We would be fools to imagine that we do not need those American Jews at our side. But we’d be equally foolish to believe that they’ll care one whit about us, unless we can restore peoplehood to the central value it used to be.

[Photo credit for "The Secret": Zion Ozeri, at www.zionozeri.com]

Mar. 26, 2009
Daniel Gordis , THE JERUSALEM POST

It’s not every day that your 15-year-old son decides that he wants to hang out with you, so when he makes the offer, you grab it. Amazingly, he suggested that we go to the Biblical Zoo. Not having been there since he was very young, I was happy to oblige.
Toward the end of our few hours there, we happened upon a relatively new exhibit, the collared peccary. With no offense intended, it’s neither especially attractive nor, to my untrained eye, a particularly interesting animal.

But this is Israel, and even the collared peccary was cause for pause. For on this sign, unlike any of the others in the zoo which display Hebrew, English and Arabic, this sign had Hebrew and Arabic in the center, English on the side, and under them all, a brief Yiddish exclamation – “Dos is nisht a chazir.” This is not a pig!! One can chuckle at a sign like that, and say “Only in Israel! Or you can ask yourself what that sign actually reveals about Israeli society.

It means, clearly, that there is a population of Israelis, sufficient in size to merit its own sign, that does not speak Hebrew, English or Arabic, but rather knows only Yiddish. And that population, were it to think that this was a pig, would be very upset. To ensure that no untoward reactions were elicited by this new non-pig, the zoo has assured the haredi population, which visits the zoo in large numbers, that in keeping with Jewish tradition, there are no pigs in this pen.

Am I over-interpreting this? Is the notion that the zoo might be worried what some (yes, only some) of these people would do if they thought a pig were in the zoo far-fetched? I don’t think so. Ask the residents of the Anglo community who live in and near Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, many of them newly-arrived immigrants, about their aliya experience. Listen long enough, and you will hear of a small but extreme group of anti-Zionist, extremist haredim in that community who are literally terrorizing them.

YOU WILL HEAR the story of the person who received a note in his mailbox saying that a television was observed in his apartment, and that if it were not removed immediately, the writer “could not be responsible for what might happen to your wife and children.” Ask them about Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations in their neighborhood, and they will tell you about the religious customs of this group on Independence Day. They wear sackcloth, they fast and they read Vayechal from the Torah, the portion most Jews read on days of mourning. They will tell you that if you slow down at a traffic circle, the chances are good that one of the small children from this group of extremists will be sent scurrying into traffic to break the Israeli flag off your car.

And the police? Yes, they’re there. They buffer between the two groups to make sure that there’s no trouble. (The police did, however, take down the Palestinian flags that these Jewish extremists had displayed.) Ask these immigrants, who chose to leave America and to raise their children in the Jewish state, about the Friday night not long ago shortly after a haredi mayor was elected there. They will tell you about three religious (but not haredi) teenage girls who were attacked on the street by this group. Two got away, but one was trapped, thrown to the ground, kicked and abused, and it was only when a teenage boy from her own community ran to help her that she was whisked away by a few of the haredi women, taken to their apartment, given clothes and a stroller to make her look haredi, and then accompanied as she was walked home and back to safety.

And the police? They literally said to a friend of mine there: “They all look the same to us. Do you have any idea what do to?” And when names were ultimately provided them, nothing happened. Why? Because at the end of the day, the police know that these Anglo immigrants will cower in fear and watch the values of their homes plummet as others, who are now hearing about this, choose Modi’in and Hashmonaim over their neighborhood. These immigrants will not resort to violence. Not so the extremists, who burn garbage bins and otherwise make it clear that it’s not worth tussling with them.

Someone I know in that community told me this week that they’ve now organized informal patrols to walk their teenage kids on Friday night, so that they can come and go without being molested. It sounds a bit like Europe, doesn’t it? Exactly the condition that Zionism was meant to change, only now it’s happening here, and now the perpetrators are “Jews” (I use the quotes advisedly).

THIS HAS BECOME the season of “loyalty-talk.” It started with the question of the loyalty of Israel’s Arabs to the state – a question that is legitimate, important and extremely complex. But ought we focus exclusively on that one population to the exclusion of others even more open about their objection to Zionism and Israel? What about those who make life miserable for Israeli Zionists? What about the obvious non-loyalty and hostility of some of Israel’s Jews?

Loyalty cuts both ways. Citizens, to be sure, can be expected to show a modicum of loyalty to the democratic state in which they live. The olim of Ramat Beit Shemesh gave up everything to come here, and now many live in fear. There are enemies of Israel who are terrorizing some of Zionism’s best. That’s what the Yiddish sign at the zoo hints at, and what the Ramat Beit Shemesh stories make abundantly clear. And the state is not protecting them.

Who’s failing the loyalty test now?

Yet, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Mine started unraveling on Tisha Be’av. For years, we’ve been hearing the Book of Lamentations in our local synagogue. This year, though, we finally decided to join our friends who’ve been reading Eicha at the Sherover Promenade, overlooking the Old City and the Temple Mount. If you live in Jerusalem, why sit in a small synagogue when you can be outside, gazing at the very site that you’re mourning?

There were hundreds of people on the promenade, and the view of the Temple Mount was as stunning as always. But at the same time, you also couldn’t help but notice the new, rebuilt city of Jerusalem, as well. The hotels, the YMCA tower – all the famous landmarks of modern Jerusalem – were fully in view, lit so brightly that it was impossible not to dwell on them, too. And I wondered – is this the way to commemorate Tisha Be’av? If we’re mourning the loss of Jerusalem, does it really make sense to sit where you can’t help but see that while the Temple is gone, Jerusalem has been rebuilt?

Somehow, the Temple Mount and the rebuilt city in one shared view didn’t seem to fit the tenor of the evening. Next Tisha Be’av, I decided, I’ll skip the promenade, and just head back to shul.

WHEN TISHA Be’av ended, we flew to Prague. We “did” the Charles Bridge, Prague Castle, Old Town. Then we began to explore
the Jewish Quarter, or, more accurately, the quarter which had been
the Jewish ghetto before it was destroyed. Shul after shul, filled with tourists, but empty of worshipers. The cemetery, also filled with hundreds of people filing by the tombstones. But did they know anything about the Maharal’s world, other than whatever they’d gleamed about the golem from Let’s Go Prague? Jewish life – erased but still a curiosity – had become a “must do” tourist venue, a vestige of the past worth half a day of audio-guides and a few dozen photographs.

You couldn’t feel any real sense of loss among the tourists, no anguish. The Jews were like the Mayan Indians, it seemed. Gone, but still interesting. Life goes on. I couldn’t help but recall the refrains of Bialik’s poem “In the City of Slaughter,” when he bemoans the fact that despite the horror of what transpired in Kishinev, life continued apace, as if there were nothing that needed to be remembered: “The matter ends, and nothing more. And all is as it was before.”

After the cemetery, it was time for Mincha. We’d been told that there was a minyan in the High Shul, so we found the entrance, at which a gigantic blond-haired, blue-eyed “bouncer” asked us why we wanted to enter, examined our ID and grilled us before allowing us in to pray. There was something so unsettling about having to virtually beg this Aryan fellow for permission to pray (though, yes, I understood that it was for our own safety) that even before we got into the shul, I knew what we had to do: We were going to go to Theresienstadt.

I’d never known that Mincha could be depressing. There were perhaps 15 men and two women, all but four or five of them clearly tourists. Without the tourists, there would have been no minyan. The glory days of the High Shul were long gone. The parochet, the cloth cover on the ark, was gorgeous – a collage of old prayer shawls, atop of which there was a Hebrew phrase, calligraphed as if it were a biblical verse: “And the sacred vestments shall return to their place.” Yes, I thought, looking at the cut up tallitot that now made up the parochet, the vestments have indeed returned to their place. But only the vestments, not the people. And in pieces, as a wall hanging.

THE NEXT day, we headed for Theresienstadt. Terezin, an army encampment long before the Nazis turned it into the transit camp (destination usually Auschwitz), is a functioning city once again. Little did Bialik know.

In today’s Terezin, hungry tourists can eat in the “Memorial Restaurant.” The building which SS officers used as a high-brow bordello, to which they whisked
the Jewish women who’d caught their fancy, is still a functioning pension, with a picture of a bed and silverware outside. Outside the gate of the Small Fortress, there was a canteen for the SS officers. Today, it is still a canteen. We watched the people there, laughing and drinking beer, Arbeit Macht Frei clearly in their view.

I asked our guide how people in the town felt about living in a place that just decades ago had been the site of such unmitigated horror. “They’re mostly just annoyed that so many tourists come by,” she said.

Bialik, again.

There was a small synagogue in Theresienstadt. It’s now abandoned, except for tourists, just like those synagogues in Prague. There are two murals on the walls, one with the phrase from the liturgy that reads: “We beg You, turn back from Your anger and have mercy on the treasured nation that You have chosen.” The other reads: “May our eyes behold Your return to Zion in compassion.” The irony, given what probably happened to the people who so lovingly painted them, was unspeakable.

We spotted a small guest book, so we went to sign our names. Previous visitors had written messages, and we leafed through a few pages. A group from Canada had visited a few weeks earlier, and had written, “We are a group of 17 Jews from [Canada], proof of the Jews’ victory over Hitler.”

I was so stunned that I had to read it again. A Jewish quarter in Prague that’s virtually the “Museum of an Extinct Race” that Hitler is said to have planned to create there. A city called Terezin with its former SS brothel still housing guests, its Memorial Restaurant, it citizens annoyed by the tourists. Empty synagogues throughout Prague and in Terezin. What Jewish victory over Hitler?!

Yet, as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Mine started unraveling on Tisha B’Av. For years, we’ve been hearing Eichah, the Book of Lamentations, in our local synagogue. This year, though, we finally decided to join our friends who’ve been reading Eichah at the Sherover Promenade, overlooking the Old City and the Temple Mount. If you live in Jerusalem, I finally figured, why sit in a small synagogue when you can be outside, gazing at the very site that you’re mourning?

There were hundreds of people on the Promenade, and the view of the Temple Mount was as stunning as always. But still, something was making me uncomfortable. Yes, you could see the Temple Mount from where we were, but you also couldn’t help but notice the new, rebuilt city of Jerusalem, as well. The hotels, the YMCA tower – all the famous landmarks of modern Jerusalem – were fully in view, lit so brightly that it was impossible not to dwell on them, too. And from that vantage point, Jerusalem just didn’t seem the destroyed, abandoned, demolished city that’s described in Lamentations. Even as we were still reading the words, I could tell – it was harder than it had been in previous years to get into the mood of utter devastation. There was something cognitively dissonant about the whole thing. And I wondered – is this the way to commemorate Tisha B’Av? Is this the place to be reading, “For these things do I weep” (Lam. 1:16)?

If we’re mourning the loss of Jerusalem, does it really make sense to sit where you can’t help but see that while the Temple is gone, Jerusalem has been rebuilt? Somehow, the Temple Mount and the rebuilt city in one shared view didn’t seem to fit the tenor of the evening. Next Tisha B’Av, I decided, I’ll skip the Promenade, and just head back to shul.

But the night wasn’t over, and along with one of our sons, we decided to go to the panel discussion we’d seen advertised in the paper on “The Sins that Preceded the Ninth of Av,” i.e., the social ills that led to the destruction of Jerusalem. There were several hundred people assembled in the courtyard of the Nature Museum, seated on chairs, and dozens more in the back and on the sides. The vast majority were people in their 20’s and 30’s, it seemed, but many were even younger – it seemed that Avi knew half the people there. There was discussion of the treatment of potential converts to Judaism (a big issue in Israel now, for political reasons), some discussion of the treatment of Israeli Arabs, and a focus on the general social ills that plague us, and that, according to rabbinic tradition, were the reasons for the destruction of Jerusalem.

But again, I had the same feeling that I’d had at the Promenade. The conversation was serious, respectful and intelligent, precisely what Tisha B’Av calls for. But in the face of the sight of hundreds of young people, many religious, but not nearly all, coming to speak about ills that plague their city and their country, all in the context of having read Lamentations together, I felt a sense of accomplishment, more than one of loss. I had a feeling of the Jewish people reborn, not destroyed, and of Jerusalem alive and thriving, not reduced to ashes. “For these do I weep”? Again, I left wondering if I would do that again next year.

When Tisha B’Av ended, we flew to Prague. Like all the other tourists, we started with the Charles Bridge, Prague Castle, Old Town. Then we began to explore the Jewish Quarter, or, more accurately, the quarter which had been the Jewish ghetto before it was destroyed. Shul after shul, filled with tourists, but empty of worshippers. The cemetery, also filled with hundreds of people filing by the tombstones. But did they know anything about the Maharal’s world, other than whatever they’d gleamed about the Golem from Let’s Go Prague? Jewish life – erased but still a curiosity – had become a “must do” tourist venue, a vestige of the past worth half a day of audio-guides and a few dozen snapped photographs.

You couldn’t feel any real sense of loss among the tourists, no anguish. The Jews were like the Mayan Indians, it seemed. Gone, but still interesting. Life goes on. I couldn’t help but recall the refrains of Bialik’s poem “In the City of Slaughter,” when he bemoans the fact that despite the horror of what transpired in Kishinev, life continued apace, as if there were nothing that needed to be remembered: “The matter ends, and nothing more. And all is as it was before.”

After the cemetery, it was time for Minchah. We’d been told that there was a minyan in the High Shul, so we found the entrance, at which a gigantic blond-haired, blue-eyed “bouncer” asked us why we wanted to enter, examined our ID, and grilled us before allowing us in to pray. There was something so unsettling about having to virtually beg this Aryan fellow for permission to pray (though, yes, I understood that it was for our own safety), that even before we got into the shul, I just knew what we were going to end up doing: we were going to go to Theresienstadt.

I’d never known that Minchah could be depressing. There were perhaps fifteen men and two women, all but four or five of the worshippers clearly tourists. Without the tourists, there would have been no minyan. The glory days of the “High Shul” were long gone. The parochet, the cloth cover in front of the ark, was gorgeous. A collage of old prayer shawls, atop of which there was a Hebrew phrase, “ve-shavu vidgei ha-kodesh li-mikomam,” calligraphed as if it were a Biblical verse: “And the sacred vestments shall return to their place.”

Yes, I thought, looking at the cut up tallitot that now made up the parochet, the vestments have indeed returned to their place. But only the vestments, not the people. And in pieces, as a wall hanging. There it was again – Judaism as fragments, remnants, virtually lifeless. Suddenly, I missed the scene of that panel discussion and those hundreds of young people that had made me so uncomfortable a few nights earlier.

The next day, we headed for Theresienstadt. Terezin, an army encampment long before the Nazis turned it into the transit camp (destination usually Auschwitz) is a functioning city once again. Little did Bialik know.

In today’s Terezin, hungry tourists can eat in the “Memorial Restaurant.” The building which S. S. Officers used as a high-brow bordello, to which they whisked the Jewish women who’d caught their fancy, is still a functioning Pension, with a cute little sign adorned by a picture of a bed and silverware outside. Outside the gate of the Small Fortress, there was a canteen for the S.S. officers. Today, it is still … a canteen. We watched the people there, laughing and drinking beer, Arbeit Macht Frei clearly in their view. I asked our guide how people in the town felt about living in a place that just decades ago had been the site of such unmitigated horror. “They’re mostly just annoyed that so many tourists come by,” she said.

Bialik, again.

There was a small synagogue in Theresienstadt. It’s now abandoned, except for tourists, just like those synagogues in Prague. There are two murals on the walls, one with the phrase from the liturgy that reads “We beg You, turn back from Your anger and have mercy on the treasured nation that You have chosen.” The other read “May our eyes behold Your return to Zion in compassion.” The irony, given what probably happened to the people who so lovingly painted them, was unspeakable.

We spotted a small guestbook, so we went to sign our names. Previous visitors had written messages, and we leafed through a few pages. A group from Canada had visited a few weeks earlier, and had written, “We are a group of seventeen Jews from [Canada], proof of the Jews’ victory over Hitler.”

I was so stunned that I had to read it again. A Jewish quarter in Prague that’s virtually the “Museum of an Extinct Race” that Hitler is said to have planned to create there. A city called Terezin with its former S.S. brothel still housing guests, its Memorial Restaurant, it citizens annoyed by the tourists. Empty synagogues throughout Prague and in Terezin. What Jewish victory over Hitler?!

It was too much to bear. It wasn’t just the horrible suffering that had unfolded there. It wasn’t the crematoria (or even, I kid you not, the sign by the crematoria that read, in part, “Restoration dedicated by the XXXX family in honor of Jason’s Bar Mitzvah.”). No, what was unbearable was the was the fact that the flowers still bloom, that smiling Terezin mothers push their babies in strollers by what were the barracks in which thousands died of typhoid, and people still drink beer in what was the S.S. canteen.

Bialik was prophetic. Life would just go on. Europe’s endured the devastation, but it can’t sustain the sense of loss. America hasn’t (yet?) weathered the destruction.

We made a quick stop on the way back to Prague, a little town called Ustek, and its now empty synagogue (there are no Jews left in Ustek), beautifully preserved and restored. The same story. A pristine synagogue, immaculate, beautiful, lovingly cared for by the non-Jewish woman who showed us around. But not a Jew in sight, just two reference books for the woman there, in case she should need to answer questions – “A History of Judaism,” and “Judaism, from A to Z,” both in Czech. There you have it. An empty building, and Judaism summed up in two volumes, in case anyone should want to know more about Jewish life – that ancient relic from the past.

It had been a long and agonizing day. And as we got into the van to head back to Prague, I realized that I’d had more than enough. I just wanted to go home. In ways that I hadn’t expected I would, I missed that place where you can’t escape the vitality of Jewish life, where even when you try to mourn, you can’t avoid seeing a city rebuilt, hundreds of young people thinking and discussing.

It’s easy to focus on all the wrong things when it comes to this place we call home. It’s tempting to perseverate about the corruption, the pollution, the traffic, some crime, the conflict with the Palestinians for which there is no possible solution at present. It’s all real.

But all of that pales into relative insignificance when you think about what’s been created here. As real as those problems are, no less real is the fact that this is the one place where even when you try to avoid it, you can’t escape the practically miraculous rebirth of Jewish life. A week of empty synagogues, Judaism summarized in two small volumes, towns with no Jews and the modern city of Terezin, and there’s no escaping it – I’ll take this place, with all its challenges, worries and dangers – any day, any time. Sadly, it took Terezin to remind me that we live in a miracle.

True, it doesn’t make getting into the Tisha B’Av frame of mind terribly easy. But no matter. Next year, I already know, I’m heading back to the Promenade to read Lamentations.