I care deeply about the future of Israel, her policies, and the role she plays in the international arena. And because of that tremendous care, as I follow Israeli news and politics, this week felt like we were bulldozed. It’s been a tough one for the American Jewish community and its conversation around Zionism and Israel. We saw the very nature of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel language debated in Washington, putting ancient tropes of anti-Semitism into the public sphere for consumption and debate. And from my vantage point, we saw the conversation internal to the Jewish community become heated and polarized.
How do we move forward? What does it mean to have politicians who bring about such a difficult conversation internally in the Jewish community? What does it mean to have Israel, a place that so many of us have deep and complex emotional attachments to, discussed in such complicated ways?
The message that many hope to hear right now is that any language of anti-Zionism and anti-Israel is synonymous with anti-Semitism, and we must call out all forms of this type of hatred and bigotry. There are those that believe Israel has no right to exist; this is anti-Jewish and we must fight against this particular ideology and hate.
Others among us hope to hear that criticism of Israel and her policies in the public sphere is of course allowed, and that we have to be able to parse out legitimate criticisms from anti-Semitism. We acknowledge that there are elements of Israel’s policies that are hurtful, and if we care about the future of Israel, we should fight for change. However, this gets murky when it’s mixed with age-old anti-Semitic tropes.
Still, others in our community hope for a message that perhaps our community is too eager to reject criticism of Israel, and that the loud and bold critiques we’ve heard this week should ring true in our ears.
You might feel that you align with one of these messages, and I imagine you might feel that one other than your own is explicitly wrong. I believe there is some truth in each of these perspectives without excluding the others. I have been disheartened this week to see how fractured the Jewish community has become as we’ve seen this play out in Washington. This debate has highlighted the messiness in defining some acts of anti-Semitism. It’s highlighted how often we might be willing to dismiss those acts when it comes from someone who aligns with our own political persuasions, and how quickly we might be to attack those who sit across the political aisle.
We need not - and should not - be an ideologically monolithic community, but we must be able to hear each other. I fear that we’ve lost true, honest, political discourse around Israel because we’ve become so polarized and we easily vilify ideologies that aren’t our own. As we react to the things that feel hurtful and complicated, how can we keep our reactions from becoming divisive in our own community? What happened in Washington this week was painful for the Jewish community, but let’s not allow our reactions to lead to internal crisis. Let’s not let our reactions fracture our own community. May this be a Shabbat, and a week ahead, that leads to hearing each other and our own truths. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
