As my readers probably know, we Jews like to shrey gevalt. This is a difficult Yiddish phrase to translate, but it means something akin to proclaiming, Chicken Little-like, that the sky is falling. I'm not sure why it is that we're like this, but we are. One thing, about which we particularly like to shrey gevalt, is concerning the disunity of Jews, and in particular the ever-present disconnect between Jews of the Land of Israel, and those of the diaspora.
Many books have been written on the subject, not to mention news articles documenting the phenomenon, and op-eds decrying it. So many incidents in the Jewish world are looked at against the background of this disconnect. Perhaps no issue is more illustrative of this trend, than the reaction of World Jewry on the Israeli response to the ongoing war - I use that word, because that's what, at the end of the day, it is - on the border between Gaza and Israel. A recent survey of Jews in Israel and abroad, shows deep divisions between Israeli and diaspora Jews on whether the Israeli government is conducting this war in an ethical, and reasonable fashion.
When I studied at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, we spent two hours a day in conversational Hebrew with Israeli instructors. These were not Reform rabbis; they were not even individuals with any connection to Reform Judaism, except for their employment. From time to time, there would be friction between teacher and students as we discussed some current issue in Israel. Occasionally, the teachers would express resentment about the standard of behavior the most vocaal students would demand of Israel, given that we were not living there, as we were only there as students, as temporary residents. One time, my teacher reacted to a student's criticism of Israel with what had become a familiar refrain. There's got to be a limit to your criticism, if you don't live here. The student retorted: I can't vote here. That's the limit.
This tension between the responsibility for Israel, and the fact that many Jews live elsewhere and have no plans or desire to live in Israel, is nothing new. In this week's Torah portion, we see the first reflection of the divide, even before the people Israel had reached the point of entering and subduing the land, when members of two tribes petition Moses to allow them to settle on the east bank of the Jordan rather than entering the land. What was the reason for the request? The grazing lands east of the Jordan, they asserted, were superior to those on the west bank.
This troubles Moses. He asks the representatives of the tribes, if they will live fat, dumb, and happy, whilst their fellow Israelites fight for possession of the land? Oh no, they clarify: they will establish homes and livestock pens on the east side, then participate fully in the conquest. Far from expecting an exemption from the war, they will fight in the very vanguard of the army. Once this is established, Moses seems satisfied; he instructs them to proceed to build themselves settlements and provisions for their livestock, and then when the conquest begins they will be expected to fight like all the other tribes. But at the end of the day, they will not have a share in the land west of the Jordan. In so proclaiming, Moses sets out a formula for relations between Jews in and out of the land of Israel; some Jews may by choice or other circumstances not live there, and therefore not take a share of the land itself, but all Jews have an equal responsibility for the land's well-being. Once Jews outside the land have taken care to build strong communities, their next responsibility is to their brother and sister Jews in the Promised Land.
Today, this does not play terribly well with Jews in the diaspora. Since my first assigment as student-rabbi in 1992, I have observed that Israel tends to be about the farthist thing from most Jews' minds. Instead of building viable communities where they live, and then turning their attention to Israel, the obsess endlessly about the minutiae of their own lives and seldom even think of Israel. The majority of Jews in the USA, in a statistic that is very telling, have never even visited Israel: this, despite that Jews tend to take annual holidays in all sorts of destinations near and far from where they live. Generally speaking, for most Jews Israel is an abstract idea, not a part of their reality.
Jews' own concerns apart from Israel aside, the idea of being responsible for a distant place, where one has little possibility of influencing what happens there, also does not play well. Amongst diaspora Jews, there is the sense that Israelis don't care what they think. Security and wars aside, elements of the current coalition government never seem to tire of denigrating all non-Orthodox streams of Judaism, and those who affiliate with them. Whilst all the other movements in Jewish life are marginal in Israel itself, they represent the majority of affiliated Jews abroad. So, when Jews in the diaspora hear about the Israeli government breaking agreements with the non-Orthodox streams, such as regards the establishment of a permanent place of egalitarian prayer at the Westen Wall, or the ever-contentious issues of conversion and personal status in Israel, they wonder what the country has to do with them.
Such gevalt! The solution, of course, is the same as the solution for just about any other deep dispute between individuals or groups: keep talking about it, and listen respectfully to what the other side is saying, and don't take yourselff so seriously that you cannot see the merit in what the other is saying. At the end of the day, the Jewish diaspora needs Israel. And Israel, whether it likes it or not, needs the diaspora. Shabbat shalom!
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