Zionizing our youth

Confronting the Zeitgeist Head-On
by Jonathan Rosenblum
The Jerusalem Post
June 11, 2010
http://www.jewishmediaresources.com/1375/confronting-the-zeitgeist-head-on

Confronting the Zeitgeist Head On
I'm sure that I am not alone in thinking that my friend Daniel Gordis is th=
e
finest writer on life in Israel in English. Like all great writers, he has =
a
talent for finding anecdotes that illuminate a larger pattern, for example,
the story with which he begins "The Storm Ahead" (Jerusalem Post, May 28
2010). He describes the terrible loneliness he felt when an identified youn=
g
American Jewish woman, a student at the Conservative movement's University
of Judaism, asked him after a class in memory of murdered Israeli soldier
Nachshon Wachsman, "What does any of this have to do with us?"
For Gordis that moment, nearly 16 years ago, was a warning signal of the
large disconnect, if not outright alienation, between young American Jews
and Israel. Even those described as young Jewish leaders, he laments, no
longer view "Israel as central to Jewish identity and peoplehood." He
remembers the pride that he felt in his youth, indeed still feels, at the
wondrous "cultural renaissance" that Israel has made possible, and wishes
those same feelings upon young American Jews.
Militating against such feelings today, however, is the universalistic ethi=
c
that dominates elite Western discourse =96 an ethic hostile to anything tha=
t
reinforces divisions between people or peoples. Europe still sets the
zeitgeist, and European elites remain in a permanent state of penance for
the Holocaust and the ravages of two world wars. "For the penitents," write
Alain Finkelkraut, "everything that distinguishes people from one another,
that divides one man from another, is bad. Borders are bad; fences are bad.
Internet is good." Europe today, shows "the passion for sameness" that
Alexis de Tocqueville identified with democracy.
The perilous state of the euro, which threatens the European monetary union=
,
has revived economic nationalism, but the change has not yet been registere=
d
by the zeitgeist. In the meantime, Israel stands against the current. As
Columbia University historian of ideas Mark Lilla puts it, "Once upon a
time, the Jews were mocked for not having a nation-state; now they are
mocked for having one." And to take pride in that state on the basis of
ethnic identity cuts across everything in which young Jewish students have
been taught to believe.
Even the religious rituals, if any, with which they have been raised train
them to resist any notion of differences between people: between men and
women; between Kohain, Levi, and Yisrael; and in some Reform temples, even
between Jews and non-Jews in the apportioning of honors.
These trends among young American Jews, bode ill for Israel, and, ultimatel=
y
for American Jews themselves, whose "vibrant Jewish life" (Gordis's
description not mine), owes much to Israel's existence =96 an existence mad=
e
more tenuous by declining American Jewish political support.
AS PASSIONATELY AS GORDIS wishes that American Jewish youth knew more about
Israel, he has little to offer by way of solutions to the looming crisis he
has so perceptively identified and analyzed.
Israel has many things of which to be proud: its mere survival in a sea of
hostility; the flourishing economy, despite the huge percentage of national
resources devoted to defense and the absorption of millions of immigrants;
the resilience of her citizens and their unity in the face of external
threats; the rebuilding of the world of Torah scholarship destroyed by the
Holocaust, with the assistance of generous governmental support.
But to ask American Jewish youth to take pride in these achievements is aki=
n
to asking them to become fans of Team Israel. There is something more than
faintly ridiculous about sports fans whose moods fluctuate wildly in
response to the fortunes of the local sports team, populated by hired
gladiators, to whose success they contribute nothing. Why should America
Jewish youth feel pride in what others, half way around the world have
achieved?
Worse, Israel is not the sort of team designed to attract fans. Sports fans
want to feel good about themselves, either through vicarious victories or b=
y
identification with lovable losers, like the Cubs. And Israel does not make
young Jews feel good. Rather it subjects them to profound discomfort. When
Israel is accused of imposing a cruel and inhumane blockade, enforced by
wanton murder, young Jews are inclined to flee from anything that identifie=
s
them with Israel, or even with being Jewish.
The younger they are, the more likely they are to hear such sentiments
expressed by virtually all of their left-thinking friends, many of them
Jewish. True, there will always be those who forge their identity in
opposition to the received opinions of their environment. But that vast
majority of university students are too conformist for that.
What is needed is something much more fundamental than reinforced ethnic
identity in a post-ethnic age. The primary problem is not so much that most
young American Jews do not see Israel as central to Jewish identity, but
rather that they do not see being Jewish as being central to their personal
identity.
Reversing the latter requires restoring the sense of Jewish chosenness that
has animated Jewish history until very recently -- on helping young Jews
view themselves as part of a world-historical mission, links in an unbroken
chain that depends upon each of them for its continuation. As the Sages
teach, "The task is not yours to complete; neither are you free to leave it
off." Chosenness does not mean identifying with the achievements of others,
with whom one has no intrinsic relationship, but rather recognizing oneself
as having a vital and indispensable role to play in the realization of the
mission one shares with all fellow Jews.
No Orthodox Jew (aside from a handful of photo-hungry loonies), even the
most fervent anti-Zionist Satmar Chassid in Williamsburg, could have asked
the question, "What does Nachshon Wachsman's death have to do with me?"
Orthodox Jews, like everyone else, will be more powerfully affected by the
death of those closest to them. But they feel bound to every other Jew and
diminished by his or her loss.
Yes, Jewish chosenness flies straight in the face of the zeitgeist, but
there is no choice. Jewish novelist Michael Chabon demonstrated the furies
the concept arouses in last Sunday's New York Times. Chabon gleefully seize=
d
on the Gaza flotilla disaster to prove that Jews can be as stupid as
everyone else. And therefore, he argued, the survival of the Jews "across
millenniums in spite of constant hatred, war, persecution, intolerance and
genocide . . . can [not] be credited to any kind of special trait or
behavior," but only to "luck."
Jews, however, never attributed their survival to their super-abundant
"seichel," but rather to the fact that God chose them to be His people, and
has preserved them, despite all the vicissitudes, as a lone sheep among
seventy wolves. We were chosen to be the people through whom He reveals
Himself to mankind -- examples of holiness and a life of purpose, in a worl=
d
that increasingly denies their existence.
Each Jew is potentially part of that mission. Those who understand that wil=
l
also understand that for all the apoplectic hatred directed at Israel last
week, and all the discomfort felt by Jews around the world, a far greater
tragedy could have taken place: One of the dead might have been a Jewish
soldier, another Nachshon Wachsman