Important though these issues are, they are not the real crisis. The true crisis, which is wholly unrelated to Rabbi Elon, is that religious Zionism has long since had very little of importance to say to Israel at large. Sadly, the Elon storm is but a tempest in an increasingly irrelevant teapot.

Religious Zionism irrelevant? “How could one possibly say that?” its adherents will ask. True, “irrelevant” is a strong word, possibly too strong. But it is hard to deny that religious Zionism has not lived up to the huge opportunities of religious creativity that the State of Israel has made possible.

After all, the world in which we in the religious Zionist camp are raising our children is a radically different world from the social, political, cultural and security realities of Eastern Europe before World War II. Our children are part of the majority culture, not an oppressed minority. While we still face threats from the outside, our children are growing up with a sense of day-to-day security that the Jews who sent their sons to the Yeshiva of Volozhin could not have even imagined. No longer do we fear the stranger on the street, a gentile government or pervasive anti-Semitism among our immediate neighbors. Nor do we confront the fear of assimilation that so deeply defines the contours of much of American Judaism.

THE MIRACLE of the State of Israel is that it has changed the very existential condition of what it means to be a Jew. Given this radical change in the condition of the Israeli Jew, it’s astonishing that for all intents and purposes, the curriculum of Israel’s great yeshivot is not all that different from what was taught in the yeshivot of Europe before the Shoah. Yes, Israeli yeshiva students probably learn a bit more Bible than did yeshiva students before the war, and yes, the methodologies of Talmud study differ from place to place. But the guts of what a yeshiva education is all about have changed scarcely at all, even though the world for which we are educating our children is radically different.

The true disappointment of post-independence religious Zionism is that it hasn’t produced any creative religious thinkers of the likes of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Abraham Isaac Kook or Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, to name but three. Each of those three, radically different from each other, bequeathed to their followers a radically new way of seeing the enterprise of what it meant to be a Jew. From Heschel, we inherited the notion of a dynamic, deeply personal relationship with God that could be achieved through a critical but loving read of Judaism’s canonical texts. With Kook, we got the first serious sense that the return to Zion might actually be the beginning of redemption, but Kook died 13 years before the state was created. And from Soloveitchik, in whose giant shadow much of the very best of modern Orthodoxy still learns and labors, we got a sense of the profundity possible when exacting Jewish learning and the demands of Jewish law are coupled to the rigors of Western philosophy.

But where are the Heschels, Kooks and Soloveitchiks of our day? Who are the brightly shining stars of post-independence Israeli religious Zionism who are equipping us with courageous, out-of-the-box, revolutionary ways of thinking about the tasks before us?

After all, for religious Zionism to really matter, it must produce the next generation of religious leaders for Israel, people who must have something to say not only to the yeshiva world, but to the Jewish, democratic society that is Israel. What might happen, for example, if the great yeshivot studied John Locke’s Two Treatises of Civil Government or A Letter Concerning Toleration (or Michael Walzer’s much more recentOn Toleration, for that matter) alongside the tractate Sanhedrin, or Thomas Hobbes’sLeviathan alongside Maimonides’s Laws of Kings and Wars? What does one need to know, and how does one need to learn to study and think, in this new, uncharted and exciting era of Jewish independence? And who in the world of religious Zionism is asking those questions?

GONE ARE the days when religious leaders can conceive of themselves as offering spiritual insight and guidance to people only in their own narrowly defined religious community. Like it or not, genuine religious leadership in the now independent State of Israel requires people who have what to say to secular Jews as well, who know how to expose them, no less than their natural “flock,” to the profundity and richness of the Jewish tradition. Secular Jews, after all, are also searching for meaning. Today’s Israeli religious leadership has effectively convinced them that the place to search for genuine spiritual depth is in India, or in Nepal. Could there be a more devastating indictment of the lack of creative discourse that is today’s religious Zionism? How seriously do today’s yeshivot take that responsibility?

In addition to everything else that it is, the State of Israel is an enormous religious and spiritual opportunity. It is the moment in which we might conceive of a Judaism born not out of fear, but of confidence. It is our chance to conceive of the outside world not as a challenge, but as a complementary source of wisdom. It is our moment for speaking to Jews across the spectrum, not only those who happen to register in our yeshivot.

The Chinese, in their wisdom, use the same symbols for “crisis” and for “opportunity.” We face both. The personal tragedy unfolding in religious Zionism today has healthfully restored a sense of doubt to this essential community. We’ll have made the most of this crisis, and of this opportunity, if we look far beyond the personalities involved, and ask ourselves what we would like our community to bequeath to the Jewish people, given the unprecedented richness of Jewish experience that the State of Israel now makes possible.

February 21, 2010

Few biblical verses are more commonly misquoted than Isaiah 49:17, in which the prophet promises Israel that they have not been forsaken, that the day will come when “your destroyers and despoilers shall leave you.” But the Hebrew words that mean “shall leave you” – mimech yetzei’u – can also be easily translated as “will come from among you.” Taken out of context, therefore, Isaiah’s promise of a secure future can be read to mean, “Those who destroy and despoil you will come from amongst you.” And though it’s not at all what Isaiah meant, the mistranslation still rings true.

Much has been written about the latest confrontation between Im Tirzu (“If You Will It,” an obvious reference to Herzl’s famous phrase), an organization of Israeli students committed to combating what it sees as post-Zionist or anti-Zionist forces in Israeli society and on Israeli campuses, and the New Israel Fund (NIF), which Im Tirzu accuses of funding many of the left-wing organizations that contributed to the findings of the Goldstone Report.

As in most such cases, both parties may have overreacted. Im Tirzu’s shameful ad depicting Naomi Chazan (president of the NIF) sporting a horn was in exceptionally poor taste, evoking the caricatures of Jews once common in Nazi publications and ubiquitous in today’s Arab press. But the NIF’s efforts to promote democracy in Israel, without question a laudable goal, also need calibration.

For any good to come out of the vicious battle of words between Im Tirzu and the NIF, certain elements of the Jewish world must recognize a plain truth that they would rather ignore. That truth is this – the Jewish People is at war.

There were decades in which the Arabs believed that Israel could be destroyed by standing armies. But that, even our enemies understand, is not about to happen. Since 1973, no standing Arab army has dared attack Israel. In subsequent years, the Arab world tried economic boycotts and terrorism. But neither destroyed the Jewish state. Having failed on those fronts, therefore, the Arab world has adopted a new strategy – the delegitimization of Israel. In this, it is joined by countries and individuals far from the Middle East.

OUR ENEMIES are winning this trial in the court of international opinion. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, Jimmy Carter, Richard Goldstone and British courts issuing arrest warrants for Tzipi Livni are only the best-known witnesses. The real list is much more extensive. One does not need a vivid imagination to envision a scenario in which the world simply imposes a binational solution on this region. If one is not absolutely committed to Jewish sovereignty, that solution actually makes some sense. Thus, this war over Israel’s legitimacy is one that we cannot afford to lose.

Nor is the State of Israel all that is at stake. American Jewish life as we now take it for granted would not survive the loss of Israel for very long. It would take only a few years after Israel’s demise for American Jews to lose the confidence and optimism that they now take for granted. After all, what is different about the Spanish, French and Italians, on the one hand, and the Basques, Chechnyans and Tibetans on the other?

All six nations have rich histories, cultures, languages, religious traditions and more. But three help determine the course of history – because they have states – while the latter three are peoples to which history simply happens. Israel is what puts Jews in the former category rather than the latter. And the transformation from our being the objects of history to shapers of history has been so thorough that most Jews simply cannot imagine the profound change in Jewish life that would ensue were Israel a vestige of the past.

Because this is a war of words with potentially lethal consequences, words matter more than ever. Thus, those who believe that territorial concessions might bring about peace must do more than simply say that. They must ask whether now, as the international community creeps steadily closer to deciding that the re-creation of the Jewish state was a grave mistake (and as Iran makes constant progress in its quest for a nuclear weapon virtually unfettered by Western sanctions), is the time for Jews to ascend the steps of Capitol Hill to convince congressmen and women to put more pressure on Israel.

Similarly, few thoughtful people would deny that Israel’s democratic institutions need strengthening, or that as long as Israel’s Arabs remain in Israel, Israel ought to provide them greater economic opportunity and increased inclusion in Israel’s democratic processes.

BUT COMMITMENT to our democracy must not come at the cost of commitment to our survival. No country at war maintains the same freedoms of speech or action that countries not facing existential threat can permit themselves. Since the Jewish people is at war, it must think as a people at war must think.

One can understand some American philanthropists’ eagerness to support the Israeli-Arab organization Adalah, which purports to “promote and defend the rights of … Arab citizens of Israel.” Yet instinctive support for a vision of greater democracy isn’t sufficient in this day and age. Harder questions need to be asked. Adalah’s proposed Israeli “Democratic Constitution” calls for ending Israel as a Jewish state. Is that a proposition that American Jews should be funding, however indirectly? Adalah’s Web site discusses the “Israeli attack on Gaza,” offering no indication that Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, whatever one might think of its conduct, was a response to years of shelling from Gaza. Is that the perspective that American Jews, regardless of their political dispositions, ought to be funding as the world inches closer to declaring Israel a pariah state?

Im Tirzu is not the issue. Nor is the NIF, or Naomi Chazan. The issue is what a people at war for its very survival can allow itself. The issue is whether as the world’s noose tightens around the very notion of Israel’s legitimacy, Jews can allow themselves the liberties we might otherwise permit ourselves were we not fighting for our very existence. As the fate of Isaiah’s prophecy reminds us, it takes only a few words to move from a vision of a secure future to one in which those who could destroy us come from our very own midst.

I no longer recall who told me to read Exodus when I was a kid. But I was transfixed by the book, and a few years later, when I saw the movie, I was enthralled. I probably saw it only once back then (this was long before VHS), but that was more than enough to form a lasting impression of Israel. As if it were lifted out of the Hanukka liturgy, Israel seemed a tale of the triumph of the weak over the mighty, the few over the many, the righteous over the wicked. It was a story imbued with moral clarity, a sense of purpose and mission. It was, quite simply, the Israel I deeply believed in before I ever saw it.

Many years later, at the start of the decade now just ended, we’d moved to Israel. One day, two of our kids were home from school. The intifada was raging; they were young and confused, hurting and frightened. So I decided that renting Exodus was just what they needed.

But almost as soon as we started the film, I could tell that my planned educational moment had failed. They were bored silly by the movie, appalled by its primitive technology. The story line seemed saccharine, insipid. But even more damning, the movie didn’t reflect the complexity of the conflict in which they were living. I made a feeble attempt to get them to stick with it, but to no avail. In truth, even I could scarcely bear the appalling lack of nuance. We didn’t finish watching it; I mumbled some sort of apology for wasting their time, and returned the movie with no fanfare.

IT’S BEEN years since I’d thought of that failed parenting moment, but it all came back with great clarity last week when I read of the death of Ike Aharonovitch, the captain of the Exodus. The ship’s commander, Yossi Harel, had died a year or two earlier. Leon Uris, the novel’s author, had died in 2003, and Paul Newman, who had played Ari Ben-Canaan in the movie version, passed away in 2008. Thus, with Ike’s death, the Exodus era had ended.

To my surprise, I found myself much sadder than I would have imagined.

For if I grew up on Exodus, my kids have grown up on Munich and on Waltz with Bashir. I grew up with an idyllic, Ari-Ben-Canaan-like image of Israel, formed from afar. Our children, though, were raised here. And this decade-just-ended, in which they became adults, began with the second intifada, proceeded to the disengagement and then to the highly problematic Second Lebanon War, and is now ending with a Schalit stalemate, a looming Iran and unprecedented international condemnation of the very fighting force that Exodus unabashedly held in such high esteem. Ike’s death is thus the perfect metaphor – his passing is a reminder that the world in which I was raised is almost totally gone.

Our kids are busy these days. One’s in law school and getting married, one’s in the army and hardly ever awake on the days that he’s home, and one’s working on matriculation exams, thinking about what he’ll do when he gets drafted. In many ways, they know a lot more than I do about this country; they’re no longer inclined to set aside time for their father’s carefully scripted educational moments.

YET I’M actually tempted to try again. It will never happen, but I still imagine some moment, when for old times’ sake, perhaps just to humor their aging parents, the kids sit down with us and watch Exodus. I’d tell them to cease the sniggering at the old-Hollywood-style love story, to try not to laugh at the images of the noble Arab in his robe and keffiyeh on the rear terrace of the King David Hotel, and to suspend their incessant political commentary on the obvious oversimplification of the conflict.

Why bother? Because despite the oversimplification and the saccharine overdose, Exodus reminds us of a world that used to exist, but doesn’t anymore. It’s a reminder of the days when young American Jews instinctively knew that the story that was unfolding across the ocean in Israel was also theirs – something we can no longer take for granted. It brings us back to those days when American Jews, and their Israeli counterparts, knew that the story was complicated, but also knew, with every fiber of their being, that the Jewish future depended on Jewish sovereignty. It was an era when Jews across the world still believed in the possibility of genuine leadership, when Jewish masses could speak without embarrassment of the fundamental justice of our cause.

Our kids, and most of their close friends, still believe those things. But they’ve learned that most people don’t; in much of the world, those convictions are considered naïve, or worse. Exodus is a vestige of an era when the world was different. Moviemaking has changed, and so has the world. Because of that, peace and justice are more elusive now than they were then.

LIKE OUR times, Ike Aharonovitch was complicated. Were it not for Harel, he probably would have gotten the ship sunk and its passengers killed. We, too, are prone to extremes. But his legacy matters because he believed in the Jews, in their still-emerging state and in the fundamental justice of their cause.

None of us would write Leon Uris’s novel today; but that’s no excuse for having no story to tell. Ike’s memory demands that we recapture the narrative – perhaps with more nuance, but with no apology for insisting on the fundamental justice of our cause.

They won’t watch the movie, though. So I’ll say it to them here. We’re in Ike’s debt, and in the debt of his contemporaries. So, as a new decade dawns, our obligation to him is simple. Somehow, we have to find once again the courage and the fortitude to believe, and to bring to fruition the dream his generation lived and bequeathed to us all.

It’s been almost a year since St.-Sgt. Dvir Emanuelof became the first casualty of Operation Cast Lead, losing his life to Hamas mortar fire just as he entered Gaza early in the offensive. But sitting with his mother, Dalia, in her living room last week, I was struck not by loss, but by life. And not by grief, but by fervent belief. And by a more recent story about Dvir that simply needs to be told, especially now at Hanukka, our season of miracles.

This past summer, Dalia and some friends planned to go to Hutzot Hayotzer, the artists’ colony constructed each summer outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls. But Dalia’s young daughter objected; she wanted to go a week later, so she could hear Meir Banai in concert.

Dalia consented. And so, a week later, she found herself in the bleachers, waiting with her daughter for the performance to begin. Suddenly, Dalia felt someone touch her shoulder. When she turned around, she saw a little boy, handsome, with blond hair and blue eyes. A kindergarten teacher by profession, Dalia was immediately drawn to the boy, and as they began to speak, she asked him if he’d like to sit next to her.

By now, though, the boy’s father had seen what was unfolding, and called over to him, “Eshel, why don’t you come back and sit next to me and Dvir?” Stunned, Dalia turned around and saw the father holding a baby. “What did you say his name is?” she asked the father.

“Dvir,” responded Benny.

“How old is he?” Dalia asked.

“Six months,” was the reply.

“Forgive my asking,” she continued, “was he born after Cast Lead, or before?”

“After.”

Whereupon Dalia continued, “Please forgive my pressing, but can I ask why you named him Dvir?”

“Because,” Benny explained to her, “the first soldier killed in Cast Lead was named Dvir. His story touched us, and we decided to name our son after him.”

Almost unable to speak, Dalia paused, and said, “I’m that Dvir’s mother.”

Shiri, the baby’s mother, had overheard the conversation, and wasn’t certain that she believed her ears. “That can’t be.”

“It’s true.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Emanuelof.”

“Where do you live?”

“Givat Ze’ev.”

“It is you,” Shiri said. “We meant to invite you to the brit, but we couldn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dalia assured her – “You see, I came anyway.”

And then, Dalia told me, Shiri said something to her that she’ll never forget – “Dvir is sending you a hug, through us.”

At that point in our conversation, Shiri told me her story. She’d been pregnant, she said, in her 33rd or 34th week, and during an ultrasound test, a potentially serious problem with the baby was discovered. After consultations with medical experts, she was told that there was nothing to do. The baby would have to be born, and then the doctors would see what they could do. A day or two later, she was at home, alone, anxious and worried. She lit Hanukka candles, and turned on the news. The story was about Dvir Emanuelof, the first soldier killed in the operation. She saw, she said, the extraordinarily handsome young man, with his now famous smile, and she felt as though she were looking at an angel.

A short while later, Benny came home, and Shiri said to him, “Come sit next to me.” When he’d seated himself down next to her, Shiri said to Benny, “A soldier was killed today.”

“I heard,” he said. “What do you say we name our baby after him?” Shiri asked.

“Okay,” was Benny’s reply.

They told no one about the name, and had planned to call Dalia once the baby was born, to invite her to the brit. But when Dvir was born, Shiri and Benny were busy with medical appointments, and it wasn’t even clear when they would be able to have the brit. By the time the doctor gave them the okay to have the brit, it was no longer respectful to invite Dalia on such short notice, Shiri told me. So they didn’t call her. Not then, and not the day after. Life took its course and they told no one about the origin of Dvir’s name, for they hadn’t yet asked Dalia’s permission.

So no one knew, until that moment when a little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy – whom Dalia now calls “the messenger” – decided to tap Dalia on the shoulder. “Someone’s looking out for us up there,” Shiri said quietly, wiping a tear from her eye, “and this no doubt brings Him joy.”

IT WAS now quiet in Dalia’s living room, the three of us pondering this extraordinary sequence of events, wondering what to make of it. I was struck by the extraordinary bond between these two women, one religious and one traditional but not religious in the classic sense, one who’s now lost a husband and a son and one who’s busy raising two sons.

Unconnected in any way just a year ago, their lives are now inextricably interwoven. And I said to them both, almost whispering, “This is an Israeli story, par excellence.”

As if they’d rehearsed the response, they responded in virtual unison, “No, it’s a Jewish story.”

They’re right, of course. It is the quintessential Jewish story. It is a story of unspoken and inexplicable bonds. It is a story of shared destinies.

And as is true of this little country we call home, it’s often impossible to know which part of the story is the real miracle, and which is the doing of extraordinary people. In the end, though, that doesn’t really matter. When I light Hanukka candles this year, I’m going to be thinking of Dalia. Of Shiri. Of Dvir. And of Dvir.

I’m going to think of their sacrifice. Of their persistent belief. Of their extraordinary decency and goodness.

And as I move that shamash from one candle to the next, I will know that Shiri was right. These are not easy times. These are days when we really could use a miracle or two. So perhaps it really is no accident that now, when we need it most, Dvir is sending us all a hug from heaven above.

‘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]

From a strategic perspective, freeing Gilad Shalit in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians makes no sense. The hundreds of prisoners now in Israeli prison were captured in dangerous operations, many of them at a cost of other Israeli casualties.

The outspoken opponents of the trade, who claim that the freed terrorists will return immediately to terrorist activity and may soon kill more Israelis, could well be right about that, too. So, too, are those who fear that paying such a high price for Sgt. Shalit will only induce Hamas and Hezbollah to try to capture more Israelis, both at home and abroad.

The Shalit case is also a reminder to all Israelis that that many of the once apparently inviolable red lines of Israeli foreign policy are now much more blurred. Despite Israel’s stated position that it will not negotiate with terrorists, Israel is clearly negotiating with Hamas.