The land of dreamers

Recently, I traveled to the USA after an absence of 38 years. I had a chance to meet relatives who remembered me only as a little boy. Now, I had a rare opportunity to speak with American Jews who have never visited Israel and do not participate in any form of Jewish community life. I don't know if there are accurate statistics about Jewish life in America, but I would imagine that my relatives are rather typical of American Jewry. Surely, if this type of Jew is in the minority, it is a substantial minority. I fear that the unaffiliated might actually be a small majority.

I was wondering what would be their attitude about Israel and about their long-lost cousin who decided to live in that land which they have never seen (preferring, sadly, to travel for a family vacation to other destinations in the world). I have read numerous articles that express real worry about the weakening sense of identification with Israel, particularly amongst the unaffiliated. Obviously, a brief visit to America and a chance meeting with just a limited number of relatives would not give me the tools of expertise to draw any conclusions. However, I do want to share my sense of satisfaction with my few readers - and to reveal to you that all whom I met had only the warmest of feelings about Israel. Jewish identity is in the midst of crisis, undoubtably. It is obviously not the core identity and the cultural expressiveness of my relatives. Yet, Jewish identity persists, even among the assimilated, intermarried and unaffiliated.

This entry is not meant to leave the impression that "all is well". The crisis is real. Although they (my relatives as a reasonable example of the typically unaffiliated Jews) instinctively identify with their own, they don't really know the Jewish story. Since the American identity is their primary identity, they tend to view Israel in American eyes, not in Jewish eyes. They see the purpose of the state to provide a haven for persecuted Jews, just as President Obama presented Israel to the Arab world in his Cairo speech. The fact that Israel was born out of the dreams of idealists who wished to redefine Jewish life and destiny was quite unknown to them. A haven, I had to explain to them, would not have been busy with the revival of the Hebrew language. The rebirth of Hebrew symbolizes the very renaissance of Jewish culture in modern times. It was an ideology that was meant to redefine the Jewish collective existence. Hebrew defined the point of reference of Jewish national life in the ancient world of the Hebrew Bible. The point of reference of the haven would have been modern antisemitism, and it would not have had a language ideology, obviously. A haven, as the central theme of Jewish collective life, would have been satisfied with "a homeland" (any homeland), as President Obama presented an outsider's viewpoint of the rise of modern Israel. The revival of Hebrew and the struggle for the Land of Israel reveal the true drama of modern Jewish history as the fulfillment of ancient aspirations. Israel is not the home of refugees; rather, it is the continuity of the historic Jewish identity of "exile and redemption". To understand this truth, one must be an "insider" - one whose education includes an intimate understanding of the Jewish narrative.