Perhaps it was because of the heightened awareness of Israel during the week of its 60th anniversary celebration. Twice in one week?

Last night, at a reception, a friend approached me. “I’m having a very hard time with Israel,” she said out of nowhere. “Ben [her husband] says it’s because I can’t let go of the myth and I can’t accept the reality.” “Oh,” I replied, “the old Yerushalayim d’malah versus Yerushalayim d’mata problem, eh?” (For those readers less Jewishly literate than she, our tradition posits two Jerusalems, the upper or heavenly Jerusalem and the lower or earthly Jerusalem.)

She is assuredly not alone. As Israel’s reality becomes more and more difficult to ignore, those raised on the myth have some serious adjusting to do – or a serious internal conflict to feel.
Read on…

While I work on a rather longer piece that tries to deal with the post-Zionist position put forward with real passion last evening at a conference of Jewish social justice activists – and with the discomfort of many in the gathering with any talk at all of Israel – a quick question.

Here we sit as Ehud Olmert apparently faces indictment on charges of corruption. By now, indictments of senior Israeli officials have lost their shock value. Shlomo Benizri, a member of Knesset (Shas) who was once Minister of Health and then Minister of Labor and Social Welfare (and once attributed two earthquakes to Israel’s tolerant attitude towards homosexuality) has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for receiving bribes, breach of faith, conspiracy to commit a crime and obstruction of justice and moral turpitude. Tzachi Hanegbi (Kadima), currently chair of the Knesset Committee on Security and Foreign Affairs and formerly Minister of Health, of Justice, of Environment and of Public Security, is under indictment for having made 69 political appointments to the Environment Ministry, at least 51 of which were members or relatives of members of Likud’s central committee. He’s accused of fraud and breach of trust and, separately, of election fraud, giving false testimony, taking a false oath and attempting to exert unlawful influence on a voter. (The 33-page indictment includes a list of 321 witnesses for the prosecution.) Former President Katsav has chosen to reject the plea bargain he reached with the A.G. months ago, in which he confessed to sexual harassment, forcible indecent assault and harassing a witness; now it appears that the original charge of rape will be reinstated. Avraham Hirchsohn, former Minister of Treasury (and also of Tourism), will stand trial for fraud, theft, falsifying corporate documents, breach of trust and money laundering, in connection with his alleged theft of some four million shekels from the labor union he headed.

And all those are merely the tip of a very large and very dirty iceberg.

Now, on the one hand, Israel ranks 30th from the top of a list of 179 countries on a scale of corruption – a scale that goes from least corrupt (the very top) to most corrupt. It scores 6.1 on a 10 point scale, and 5.0 is regarded as the cut-off point between “acceptable” levels of corruption and unacceptable levels. By that accounting, things are not as bad as they seem.

But quite plainly, they are not very good.

I wonder whether there is, perhaps, a Jewish propensity for “beating the system.” For a very long time, we were essentially required to beat the system in order to stay alive. We had to cut corners, cheat, lie, get away with things. The systems where we lived were oppressive, and we developed the wits to endure. Might there not have been a near-genetic selection for the live-enhancing ability to make it in spite of the oppression?

Has anyone done anything like systematic work on this question? Is the question simply absurd, meaning there is no such distinctive propensity?

Your thoughts?

(NOTE: The conversation website had an emergency upgrade last week and was down for a significant amount of time. We apologize for the inconvenience.)

Back in the days I was editing Moment Magazine, our managing editor and I had a nearly ritual conversation every six or eight weeks. An article would arrive from one of our favorite contributors, Rabbi Harold Schulweis, arguing eloquently and persuasively that we, the Jews, were too fixated on the Sho’a, the Holocaust. An excess of remembering can bar the path to imagining. Or however he’d chosen to put it this time around.

That in itself would have been problem enough, but I from time to time compounded the problem by writing my own version of essentially the same argument. So each time the latest Schulweis or Fein would land on the desk of our managing editor, she’d come into my office waving the redundant essay and, annoyed, say, “How often are we going to print this same piece?”

To which my invariable answer was, “Until they [our readers] get it right.”

Which is a long way around to lay the groundwork for another go at an issue that keeps raising its head here, in this space.

In our last go ‘round, Dan Schneiderman says, “What a ridiculous idea that you can make peace with people who do not want peace with you. You are suggesting that the arabs [sic] live in peace with you when they cannot even make peace with themselves. Come on, knock it off already.”
Read on…

Back in 1978, when Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) was founded, we – dovish type here in America – were overjoyed. At last there was a movement in Israel that embraced and reflected our views.

I was in those days the editor of Moment magazine, and as nearly as I recall, we were the first publication in America to take note of the new movement. And a small group of like-minded people met in New York and decided to send a telegram of commendation to Shalom Achshav’s first major rally in Tel Aviv. We played by the rules of the game: Our telegram was in Hebrew and was sent directly to the movement’s leaders rather than to the press. (Confession: We knew, or at least supposed, that the Shalom Achshavniks in Israel would have the smarts to release our wire to the press – and, indeed, if memory serves, it was duly noted the next day in the Times.)
Read on…

Every Mideast peace plan acknowledges that the actual cost of resettling a substantial number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank will be very high. That is so whether they are resettled in pre-1967 Israel or in settlement blocs that may remain intact according to agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It is generally assumed that those costs will in large measure be picked up by America and the EU.
Read on…

Mourning, again.

And then: Want to unite the Jewish people? Lots of luck. Below, you will find some – just some – of the currently 24,300 items that come up when you Google “reactions to yeshiva killings.” The blogosphere careens all over the place, and I begin with some reasonably (if largely unreasonable) examples, most neither requiring nor deserving comment. I turn then to a few of the more substantial responses and consider their meaning and import.
Read on…

Once upon a time – in 1946, to be more precise – American Christian support for Zionism was expressed through an organization called the American Christian Palestine Committee. Its membership was drawn principally from liberal churches, and in the run-up to the establishment of Israel it played an important role. Some years later (1967), Dr. Franklin Littell founded “Christians Concerned for Israel,” again drawing mostly on mainline churches, and in 1978 CCI grew into the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel.

So “Christian Zionism” has roots in this country.
Read on…

Recently, in yet another effort to clean up old files, I stumbled on an essay I wrote five years ago and had entirely forgotten. Some things have changed since then; more have stayed pretty much the same.

I do not know whether I any longer agree with myself, but much of the analysis strikes me as on the mark. Make of the conclusions what you will; the heart of it is the analysis, not the prescription.

Oh yes: It’s long. Here goes:

———

October 8, 2003

“We fed our heart on fantasies
Our heart’s grown brutal on the fare.”
– Ted Hughes

Read on…

What to make of current Israeli policy regarding settlement construction?

On the one hand, we have Ehud Olmert’s solemn commitment at Annapolis: No new settlements, no settlement expansion. And on that same hand, more or less (perhaps minus one or two fingers), we have the PM’s explicit letter Of December 31, instructing the ministers of defense, housing and agriculture to refrain from authorizing any construction in the West Bank without his and Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s prior approval. Specifically, “construction, new building, expansion, preparation of plans, publication of residency tenders and confiscation of land stemming from other settlement activities in the (West Bank) area will not go forward and will not be implemented without requesting and receiving in advance approval by the defense minister and the prime minister.”

Clear, yes? Unambiguous, yes?
Read on…

Olmert? One wants to believe his passion for peace, often stated in elegant and even eloquent terms. The motive doesn’t much matter. Maybe it’s his Peace Now wife and kids, maybe it’s a genuine conviction that time is working against Israel, maybe it’s his way of redeeming a reputation so badly tattered by the Lebanon war. Whatever the motive, the words are encouraging.
Read on…