KEY EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS FOR THIS SECTION:

• There is no question that the Jewish People created the State of Israel. Is it still today the vision and venture of the whole People?
• How can an understanding of Israel as an endeavor of the whole Jewish people expand the way you educate about Israel?
• What role can Israel play in the lives of Jews living beyond her borders?
• How can the relationship between Jews in Israel and those abroad mutually enhance the other?

Text: Israel Calls Me

This Biblical text introduces the idea of the person happily living in the Diaspora who suddenly realizes that the Jewish state/collective needs him and that if he follows his heart and responds to the call, his life is going to change completely. It aims to focus on the question of what happens to Jews when they live in one place but are indeed connected to another place (Israel) which needs their help.

The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah:

In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.

They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

The book of Nehemiah (Tanach) Ch. 1 vv. 1-4

Explanation of text:

The story of Nehemiah which appears in the Biblical book that bears his name is fascinating. The book itself is unique. It appears to represent the only autobiographical story told in the entire Tanach. Nehemiah, introduced in the above passage from the very beginning of the book, is a Persian Jew living in Susa (or Shushan) the capital city of the ancient Persian Empire.

His family had got to the area as part of the forced exile of Jews to Babylon (present day Iraq) after the destruction of the first Temple in 586 B.C.E. Babylon itself had been defeated fifty years later and had been taken over by the expanding Persian empire. The Persians, more liberal in their imperial policy than the Babylonians, had allowed those among the Jews who so wished to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild their Temple as part of the Persian Empire.

Most had chosen to stay in Babylon or Persia. Those who chose to return indeed succeeded after some twenty more years to build what was to become known as the Second Temple.

Nehemiah was a high official in the Persian court a couple of generations after these events. From his book we understand that he was a faithful and religious Jew – a good Diaspora Jew, loyal to his king and to his empire, intending to live out his life as a Jew within the Persian Empire.

The event that changed his life is described in the opening verses. A chance meeting with one Hanani, either a blood brother or a fellow Jew, who had just returned from a visit to Judah and Jerusalem, caused Nehemiah to understand that, contrary to his expectations, the community over there and the Jews of Jerusalem were in trouble. The questions that then become clear to him are whether this new knowledge demands anything of him, personally and if so, what?

In that one moment his previous life path dissolves together with the tears, the mourning and the fasting which he describes as his immediate reaction and indeed in the continuation we hear of his decision to ask for leave of office from the Persian king and for authority to go on a journey of thousands of miles to start reorganizing the communities of Jerusalem and Judah, working in the king’s name but on behalf of his own people, the Jews.

It is these reactions that we wish to highlight here: this faithful Jew and loyal servant of the Persian Empire, living a Diaspora Jewish life with no necessary feeling of contradiction between conflicting loyalties, feels the call of his own People and has to decide how to react. And then he acts. How do we react to this story today? What does a story like this say to us today?

For an extended activity based on this text, see the related activity Israel Calls Me.

KEY EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS FOR THIS SECTION:

• There is no question that the Jewish People created the State of Israel. Is it still today the vision and venture of the whole People?
• How can an understanding of Israel as an endeavor of the whole Jewish people expand the way you educate about Israel?
• What role can Israel play in the lives of Jews living beyond her borders?
• How can the relationship between Jews in Israel and those abroad mutually enhance the other?

Text: Peoplehood and Israel/Diaspora Relations

This text describes an approach to Israel through the lens of Peoplehood, based on the approach of Mordechai Kaplan. It asks the question: in which ways, if at all, is a Peoplehood relationship with the State of Israel different from the standard view of connection with Israel that is at the heart of most educational activities relating to Israel within the Diaspora?

In the Diaspora, where Jews constitute a small minority of the population, the opportunities for independent creative action are limited. Their involvement, however, in the cause of world Jewry and, more especially in that of Israeli Jewry, the national majority in Israel, stimulates their own Jewish creativity. The number of Jews who visit Israel, who study in Israel, who are moved to learn its language, sing its songs, read its literature, participate in the solution of its social and economic problems, live naturally a more creative Jewish life than if the State of Israel did not exist.

Without the State of Israel, Diaspora Judaism, living on the momentum of the past, a momentum which necessarily weakens from generation to generation, unless new creative forces are set at work, would soon be reduced to an anachronism…

As we make the problems of the Yishuv [the Jewish community in Israel] our own, we…are lifted above our egocentricity and are forced to grapple with ethical problems, instead of merely paying verbal tribute to ethical principles in the abstract. The relation of Diaspora Judaism to that of Israel is like the relation of heat to the flame that produces it. Without the flame, there could be no heat. If we wish to enjoy the heat of Jewish creativity in the Diaspora, we must, through our personal participation in the Zionist cause, keep feeding the flame of Jewish life in the State of Israel.

Mordechai Kaplan: Questions Jews Ask: Reconstructionist Answers, 1956

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Explanation of Text:

A Peoplehood approach to the question of Israel means accepting all Jewish communities throughout the world as legitimate and valuable (if not necessarily completely viable in the long run). However, it is clear that within this approach, there is a necessity to see a Jewish state as occupying a different position in terms of its significance and potential for creativity.

This piece by Mordechai Kaplan, famous as the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, a stream of Judaism which redefined the Jewish collective as the civilization lived by the Jewish people, deals with a subject that was extremely central to his thought, the relationship between the Jews in the new sovereign state of Israel and Jews throughout the world.

In his Principles of Reconstructionism, drawn up a year before the above statement he had mentioned the need for “the renewal of the covenant binding all Jews throughout the world into one united people, with the Jewish community in Israel as the core”.

He saw the need for all Jews to accept Jewish communities everywhere as part of the international Jewish People with special emphasis on the Jewish community in the Land and State of Israel. He believed that without the Jewish community in the State of Israel, and the great cultural and spiritual energy which would come from there, the other Jewish communities around the world would suffer cultural attrition which would ultimately lead to their downfall or disappearance.

In this, he was a disciple of Ahad Ha’Am, the unorthodox Zionist thinker who also believed in the importance of the survival of Diaspora communities and the energizing power of the Zionist community in Eretz Israel. The difference between them in this respect was that Kaplan had every intention of living that active Jewish life in which he so believed, in the United States whereas Ahad Ha’Am moved to Eretz Israel/Palestine at the age of 66, almost ten years younger than Kaplan when he wrote the above excerpt.

Kaplan believed that Zionism was a good thing and that aliyah was a good option for those who wanted. However he totally rejected the idea common in Zionism thought (Ahad Ha’Am was in a minority position in this respect within the Zionist movement) that said that the Galut – the Exile, referring to Jewish communities outside the land of Israel – should be eliminated and that diaspora communities were a negative aberration from what Jewish life should be like, lived completely in the Jewish land.

Kaplan believed that only if the Jews were a majority in their own land where they had both the ability and the obligation to deal with all of the problems that life produced, would they need to call on the resources of thousands of years of accumulated insight to solve issues.

In that environment Judaism would indeed come alive with all of its three-dimensional potential and a rich and vibrant cultural creativity would be released. This would ultimately enrich the lives of Jewish communities throughout the world and that was why he saw the community of the Yishuv as a kind of “primus inter pares” among the Jewish communities of the world.

Thus the metaphor of the flame that he uses in the piece above; the power of the flame from the Jewish community of Israel (which he distinguished from the state itself which was a political entity whose job was to organize the lives of the whole population including non-Jews) would warm and enrich all the communities the existence of which was valid and legitimate in and of itself.

It was clear to Kaplan that Israel was a project of the Jewish People in which all Jews must feel invested and the Jewish People must be one of the projects of the State of Israel and the Jewish community within. They must complement each other and see the continued existence of the Jewish People all over the world as a creative enterprise common to all.

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Extension Activities

American Jews and Israel

KEY EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS FOR THIS SECTION:

• There is no question that the Jewish People created the State of Israel. Is it still today the vision and venture of the whole People?
• How can an understanding of Israel as an endeavor of the whole Jewish people expand the way you educate about Israel?
• What role can Israel play in the lives of Jews living beyond her borders?
• How can the relationship between Jews in Israel and those abroad mutually enhance the other?

Text: Song of the Morning, by Amir Gilboa

Amir Gilboa’s poem “Song of the Morning” raises questions of how an individual interacts with, and becomes part of, the collective. The poem offers us a way to think about being part of the Jewish People.

Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning
And he feels he is a people and he starts walking
And everyone he meets, he greets with “Shalom”

Song of the Morning (Shir Baboker Baboker) by Amir Gilboa

For the full text of the whole poem, with Hebrew and English transliteration, see:
http://www.hebrewsongs.com/song-pitomkamadam.htm.Back to top

Explanation of Text

Amir Gilboa’s opening verse is disguised as a seemingly simple list of mundane acts performed by an individual. Holistically, this sequence of acts captures no less than the transformation of a people. Appearing in the early 1950s, the poem reflects Gilboa’s sense of the impact that the creation of the State had on the Jewish people.

He asks: What is it that makes individuals, “all of a sudden” feel like a people? His answer: Through actions, the collective essence of the group actually reveals itself and a sense of identification emerges. Thus a man first “rises” in the morning and then “feels.” It is reminiscent of Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” The act of thinking necessitates the existence of an entity that performed it. Acting upon the world as a collective makes the people a real tangible entity with which individual Jews can identify.

Gilboa captures in one sentence a historical moment where the collective and individual have become one. The creation of the Jewish sovereign entity, the subject of hundreds of years of longing and aspirations, turns the individual into a member of the collective and allows him to act upon the world. In this sense it impacts the whole Jewish people that are witnessing the rise of a new morning with endless opportunities.

Sixty years later, one must wonder what can inspire again our sense of peoplehood. What significant
collective action would make us feel today — or in the next years — like a people? What collective ethos can rejuvenate and reenergize our mission to inspire the minds and hearts of Jews around the globe? What can make them rise in the morning, feel like a people, and begin making our world a better place?

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Extension Activities

Israeli Music and Peoplehood

Israeli Music and Social Protest

KEY EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS FOR THIS SECTION:

• There is no question that the Jewish People created the State of Israel. Is it still today the vision and venture of the whole People?
• How can an understanding of Israel as an endeavor of the whole Jewish people expand the way you educate about Israel?
• What role can Israel play in the lives of Jews living beyond her borders?
• How can the relationship between Jews in Israel and those abroad mutually enhance the other?

Text: An Open Letter, by Ahad Ha’am

What we lack above all is a fixed spot to serve as a ‘national, spiritual center’, a ‘safe retreat’, not for the Jews, but for Judaism… (Ahad Ha’am, An Open letter to My brethren in the Spirit, 1891)

Explanation of text:

Ahad Ha’am (the literary name of Asher Ginsburg) is known as the father of cultural Zionism. Unlike Herzl who was focused on saving the Jews through the creation of Israel as a national center recognized by the nations Ah’ad Ha’am was focused on saving Judaism as a civilization and national spirit.  He saw in the creation of the Jewish State,  the establishment of a national spiritual center.

Ahad Ha’am was concerned that modernity and the difficult situation in the diaspora will threaten the continuity of Judaism. He did not see how Jews at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th will gather the energy, creativity and innovation to revitalize the Jewish collective enterprise. In his article “the Jewish State and Jewish problem” he writes :

And now Judaism finds that it can no longer tolerate the galuth from which it had to take on, in obedience to its will-to-live, when it was exiled from its own country, and that if it loses that form its life is in danger. So it seeks to return to its historic centre, in order to live there a life of natural development, to bring its powers into play in every department of human culture, to develop and perfect those national possessions which it has acquired up to now, and thus to contribute to the common stock of humanity, in the future as in the past, a great national culture, the fruit of the unhampered activity of a people living according to its own spirit. For this purpose Judaism needs at present but little. … a good-sized settlement of Jews … Then from this centre the spirit of Judaism will go forth to the great circumference, to all the communities of the Diaspora, and will breathe new life into them and preserve their unity; and when our national culture in Palestine has attained that level, we may be confident that it will produce men in the country who will be able, on a favourable opportunity, to establish a State which will be a Jewish State, and not merely a State of Jews.

Ahad Ha’am saw the Jewish State as a  ‘safe retreat’ for the purpose of regenerating and reinvigorating Judaism and having an impact on “all the communities of the Diaspora”. His vision of Palestine was that it would serve as a  fresh start which seemed like the only  viable option for the Jews. It is important to note that he did not think all Jews needed to immigrate there. The national center was the instrument for the rejuvenation of Judaism which is why Wertheimer challenges the authenticity of the Tikun Olam commandment – “a commandment unknown to Jews for most of their history”. He refers to its preeminence as a “hot trend” promoted by “preachers  in every corner of the Jewish community” who in the process ask Jews to drop their “parochial concerns”.  While this may be a somewhat exaggerated and not totally accurate depiction of the situation, it raises an important question: What is the right balance between addressing local and internal needs and thinking globally?

There is no doubt that the current global paradigm has become much more intimate. The world has become a global village and its disasters seem to hit home wherever they occur.  The Jews are also in a different place. They are better off and are in a position to help others more, which pulls them toward helping those in more dire difficulty, than how they understand the needs of their own Jewish bretheren. This accounts for the desire to contribute to repairing the world beyond just taking care of particular Jewish interests. The answer may be found in  the  realization that it is not a zero sum game and both issues need to be addressed responsibly.

Extension Activities

Engagement with Israel

KEY EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS FOR THIS SECTION:

• There is no question that the Jewish People created the State of Israel. Is it still today the vision and venture of the whole People?
• How can an understanding of Israel as an endeavor of the whole Jewish people expand the way you educate about Israel?
• What role can Israel play in the lives of Jews living beyond her borders?
• How can the relationship between Jews in Israel and those abroad mutually enhance the other?

Text: A New Zionism, Mordechai Kaplan

Without a Jewish People regenerated in spirit, no matter how successful the state that it would establish, and how large a population that state could muster, Zion will continue to be unredeemed’. Mordecai Kaplan, A New Zionism, 1959

 

Mordechai Kaplan followed in Ahad Ha’am footsteps. To him as well the real goal of the creation of the State was the regeneration in spirit of the Jewish People. Kaplan emphasizes that point by stating that “no matter how successful the state that it would establish, and how large a population that state could muster” Zion will be unredeemed. In other words redemption will be measured not by how many Jews live in Israel or how successful the State would be. It would be a function of the spiritual revival of the whole Jewish People.

It is important to note that Kaplan refers to the State as the State that the Jewish people established. For him the State would revive the People’s spirit the world over through the reconstitution of Jewish Peoplehood and reclamation of Eretz Israel (literally, the Land of Israel). Its purpose is dual looking both internally at the Zionist project and externally towards the Jewish People globally.

What this requires in Kaplan’s eyes is: “ (a) it has to foster among the Jews both in Israel and the Diaspora a sense of interdependence and a process of interaction; and, (b) it has to give the individual Jew the feeling that participation in that interdependence and interaction makes him more of a person (Kaplan 151)”. Zionism for Kaplan will infuse the Jewish People with a renewed sense of purpose that would engage and inspire both the collective and its individuals.

Extension Activities

Engagement with Israel

KEY EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS FOR THIS SECTION:

• There is no question that the Jewish People created the State of Israel. Is it still today the vision and venture of the whole People?
• How can an understanding of Israel as an endeavor of the whole Jewish people expand the way you educate about Israel?
• What role can Israel play in the lives of Jews living beyond her borders?
• How can the relationship between Jews in Israel and those abroad mutually enhance the other?

Text: The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel

The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

…The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

… We appeal to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream – the redemption of Israel.

Explanation of the Text:

These three excerpts from Israel’s Declaration of Independence all relate to Israel’s connection to the Jewish people. The first establishes the historical connection. Israel is where the Jewish people began its journey as a collective. It is where its spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Where it attained, in ancient terms and times statehood and where it began developing its culture.

The second establishes the connection between the vision of the State and Jewish values: “it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel”. That is the basis that is to ensure the complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants, and the freedom of religion , conscience, education, language and culture. Jewish ethics are at the base of Israel’s Statement of Independence.

The third excerpt relates to the future collaboration with world Jewry. The Declaration calls for Diaspora Jews to support the Zionist enterprise through Immigration and the building of the State. But it also calls upon world Jews to stand by the Israelis in general in the great struggle of realizing the Jewish age-old dream – the rebuilding of the Jewish homeland in Israel.
However at this point the Declaration ends on an intriguing note. It refers to the age-old dream as – “the redemption of Israel”.  As the term Israel also means the people of Israel it is not clear if the intention is that the state of Israel will provide the leadership and energy that will redeem the whole people throughout the world (as Ahad Ha’am suggested), or that redemption will come when all Jews immigrate to Israel.

Extension Activities

Engagement with Israel