I had the pleasure and blessing to spend a month's time in Israel. I came with a blank mind - no biases, no preconceived notions, nothing - just being there. I wanted to immerse myself in the Land, to experience it from the point of pure Experience.
The Land is inhabited by a fractured People - complete with those who are not the People at all living among them. There are Jews who think that Mosaic law is an outdated and archaic "Mickey Mouse" philosophy living in the same buildings as those who think that Israel the country is a violation of the Divine Will. African migrants roam the streets, passing the Ethiopians claiming to be from the lost Tribes, who themselves are talking to the Russian immigrants who are grandchildren of Jewish grandfathers and no more. Women soldiers sit on the same buses that the "Burqa women" ride, one holding their gun and the other their children. Taxi drivers gently chide (if not outright verbally assault) tourists to move to Israel, while thousands of Israelis leave for the greener pastures of New York and Florida. Buildings are demolished to placate the Leftist peaceniks who claim the land was once owned by an Arab, while IDF helicopters and artillery pieces flatten Arab buildings in Gaza being used as rocket launching pads. The secular cashiers in the department stores wish people a "shabbat shalom" while some merchants look for the "frier" they can take to the bank.
Some of the inhabitants look to the past, sitting in the shadows of ancient places espousing philosophies and dreams of re-establishing the days of ancient yore. Some look to the future, indifferent to the archaeological sites around them in favor of the high rises and luxury apartments that arrive with more successful start-ups being sold to wealthy American investors. Some think the answers are to be found in the primeval books of wisdom, while others dismiss these books as antiquated and antediluvian remnants of un-Enlightened people.
We drove through Jerusalem, parking our car in the parking lot of the brand new Mamila mall and apartment complex and walking to the Kosel - a trip of about a kilometer, though spanning a few thousand years. We traveled to Teverya (Tiberias) and prayed at the kevarim of the Rambam, Rav Yochanan ben Zakkai, the Shelah, and some other Tannaim and Amoraim, which were around the corner from a shopping center. We visited Ein Gedi, which was a old world manufacturing center of balsam, and today is a beautiful nature reserve where one can walk the ground where Shaul chased David (the famous story of David cutting the corner of Shaul's garment took place in the area). I listened to the haftarah of Shimshon (Parshas Naso) literally bein Tzorah v'Eshtaol, in an air conditioned shul in modern day Ramat Bet Shemesh.
But before all of this, I went to a beach in Ashdod.
Sitting next to us on the beach were three young teenagers, probably playing hooky from school. They were fooling around, smoking, going from the water to tan in the sun and back again. I looked at them and felt this odd sense of revulsion and disdain - this is the goal of G-d's promise to Avraham?? The G-dless and soulless secular Beach Boys dream of sun surf and love? And then, upon arriving back "home" in Ramat Beit Shemesh and seeing the teenagers in the park, hurting from rejection and feeling hopelessly placeless, adrift in a country they do not know what to make of nor fit into, I had the same feeling, and the same incredulity. It was a feeling that was to remain on the outskirts of my mind the entire time I was in the country, whether I was in the Tel Aviv mall, Old City of Jerusalem, suburbs of Haifa, at a yahrtzeit seuda in Beer Sheva, or on the mirpeset of my gracious grandparents in law in Ramat Bet Shemesh, overlooking the broken city of Bet Shemesh and its suburbs.
And yet.....
There is a certain shadowy sense of the Land wrapping itself around you, a magnetic draw it pulls you in with - for those who are not in tune with their inner worlds, they can mistake it for "only in Israel" stories and a love affair with shwarma; but it is a sense of belonging, of rootedness, of being a part of what is a part of you. For it is still a Land that seduces its Lovers, calling out to them in gentle whispering breezes and caressing them in wisps of visions of a future they know uniquely to be Yisrael's.
After traveling the Land, the question running through my mind was, should today's times be written as a sefer of Tanach, what would it look like?
Then I saw sefer Shoftim, and immediately did a double take. Right down to conquering the land and not driving out the inhabitants, resplendent in the battles and the people just not getting the messages given to them, the problem being summed up as u'bayamim haheim ein melech b'yisrael...it is as true today as it was then. Only today the idols are democracy and liberal philosophy, instead of the Great Fish and the Lord of the Flies (Dagon and Ball Zevuv).
Just as people today question living in Israel, from socio-economic grounds as well as religious ones, I would venture to say that people in those times questioned themselves as well. The confusion and contempt, the disbelief that this is the beginning of something completely different, the very first flowering of a thirteen petaled Rose that has lain dormant for hundreds of years, is not new. We wondered then, as we do now, what it means to be a Jew - we went from the days of Moshe and the clarity he brought, to Yehoshua and his tenacity in defending and promoting the Bris we have with haShem, to....nothing. A leader here and there, but mostly a vacuum in which we stumbled around and wondered what we were supposed to do, and who we were supposed to be. Just as today. The parallels are frightening in their implications...
I had a slight epiphany one night, sipping a beer on that porch in Ramat Beit Shemesh (beer is an epiphany inducing beverage, after all).
All the people in Israel are searching for their version of Heaven, in the place they think is closest to it (as an aside, I think this is wonderful pshat in the Gemara which says that Jerusalem/the Old City is closest to the entrance to Heaven - and Hell...).
For some, heaven is a socialist ideal in this world. For others, it is a "vibrant democracy in the Middle East." For still others, it is a place where you can do many mitzvos like maaser, and orlah, so that they may earn a bigger share in the World to Come. Some think it is a theocracy built on their interpretations of halacha, with bonus points that allow them to claim ownership of their area and forbid those who do not comply to their standards and ideas. [You thought I was talking about Meah Shearim, but that applies to Dati Leumi yishuvim as well, no?]
All of them are trying to build Heaven - here, in this Land.
Contrast that with the religious Heaven you were taught...the one that had no room for Earth, because there was nothing sacred about Zhidikov, Vilna, or even Boro Park.
Why do people think Heaven is more important than Earth? The same theological flaws people point out regarding the second coming are true of saying that the "real game" is being played on a field different than the one the players are in - or in simpler English, saying that your reality is not the one that you live in is psychotic!
Do people not see the Torah never bothers to mention Heaven or Hell? Why do people leave the world behind in their minds for flights of fancy? Each week brings another quote ripped out of context that supports a worldview centered on staying cloistered in a virtual ghetto of our making, with reality walled off and our gaze directed up at the Heaven/Reality weve created for ourselves. We ask ourselves deep questions about the internet and music, about why the vibrancy is gone and the kids no longer care, while the masses slowly slip away to the abyss of the West.
Perhaps this focus on what is beyond this world, on a reality that has not yet arrived, is inbred from thousands of years of persecution, when all we had was a next world...
But now, just perhaps, we HAVE something in this world - the prophecies have come true, in far more Real and True ways than the superficial readings of them would admit. There indeed is the callings and voices of the young, the old, the groom and bride, in the streets of Jerusalem. Yisrael is no longer just a concept expressed in synagogues and dusty books pored over by teenagers and long bearded adults. Now the name Yisrael is a people, a nation, with shopping malls and skyscrapers, schools and a lottery, beaches and restaurants, and more shuls, yeshivos, and interest in what it means to be a Jew than ever before. {Less of a clue, arguably, but more of an interest.}
The Jew as he who lives as the consummate "other", suffering quietly in a corner of a community that is not and never will be his is perhaps outdated...and perhaps, even more true than ever before; one who lives as a ben Yisrael probably feels most alienated, the most "Ivri", the most as an "other" in Israel/Yisrael itself, waiting for Klal Yisrael to shake off the dust, arise, and bloom into the People it can be.
This "otherness" - is it what a Jew is, or merely a product of his inability to figure it out?
And how does one know which Jew to be?
