A variety of important/inspiring/challenging things have made it through across my screen for Yom Ha’Atzmaut. I’d like to share some with you.
A truly inspiring figure and one of the great rabbis in Orthodox America, R. Yosef Blau – the “Spiritual Guide” or Mashgiach Ruchani at Yeshiva University’s rabbinical seminary – spoke a year ago of the power of meeting Palestinians and hearing their own narratives, through the Encounter Program. Here is a report about it, including a video of his speech at the 2011 Encounter fundraising dinner. Yes, you can be an empathetic and universalist Zionist.
Leonard Fein has been “curating” a discussion on the Huffington Post called Liberal Zionists Speak Out. It is quite stimulating. We Liberal Zionists have been most embattled and this conversation needs to be broadcast widely, affirming the ethical standing of Jewish peoplehood, and our need for political sovereignty in a world where not that long ago our enemies murdered millions of us and where real enemies continue to see us as little better than “Jewish Arabs” who should do well to live as a minority in an Islamic state. But the sad but real transformation is that a liberal Zionism of most of the 20th century gave way to a right-wing Zionism of the late 20th century. Myself, I still believe in a liberal Zionism, sensitive both to the claims of Jewish destiny, Jewish cultural commitments and those of our neighbors, both those who are citizens of the state and those who are subject to its rule. Anyway, you’ll enjoy most of these articles, including those by Muki Tsur, Michael Walzer, Stuart Schoffman and Ruth Gavison.
An important discussion in Israel happened this year regarding Hatikva, the national anthem. Supreme Court Justice Salim Jubran stood in silence as Hatikva was played, causing national apoplexy. But, as Bibi Netanyahu recognized, it is not fair to expect an Israeli Arab to sing with reverence the words “as long as a Jewish soul longs within the heart … “
What can Israeli citizenship mean to the 20% who are non-Jewish? The Forward has taken up this question with an interesting proposal about the text of the national anthem, as advanced by their columnist Philologos. That pseudo-nonymous writer is no post-Zionist leftist, but a true paleo-Zionist ideologue, who presses the question of the multi-cultural components of the Jewish state. The Forward site has Neshama Carlebach singing the revised words. See what you think. Compare this to the version sung by survivors in Bergen-Belsen in April 1945.
Finally, let me offer you an old poem by an old poet, Yehuda Karni, an early immigrant, an early editor of HaAretz, who died in 1949. A moving piece of romantic retro-Zionism, longing to become a single stone in a wall of safety in a rebuilt Israel. I feel it.
Put me in the breach, like every other rolling stone
Fasten me strongly with a hammer
Perhaps I may atone for my homeland and pay off
The sin of a people who has not mended it ruins.
How good to know that I am a stone like every other stone of Jerusalem
How fortunate I am, for my bones are bound into the wall
For why should my body be any less than my soul, which in fire and water
Walked along with its people, screaming and silent?
Take me with all the Jerusalem stones, and place me into the walls
Cover me with mortar
And as they wear away within the wall, my bones will sing
To greet the Messiah.
- Nedarim, Daf 79 - January 12, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 78 - January 11, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 77 - January 10, 2023