When I think back on my childhood on Kibbutz Heftziba, Tu Bishvat remains one of my most exciting memories. Every year we would don our white shirts and climb Mount Gilboa ever-so-festively to plant cypress and pine saplings.
There is a photograph of me from those years in one of our family albums; there I am standing proudly next to the fresh mound, looking serious and determined as only a 5-year-old can. Bent down beside me, also wearing a white shirt, and using a large hoe to help me cover the sapling's roots, is my grandfather, Moshele Horwitz. Grandpa Moshele was an orphan, a graduate of the agricultural boarding school in Ben Shemen, a Palmach fighter, kibbutznik, community secretary, school principal, youth movement emissary, and founder of the Institute for Organizational Consulting in Efal; he also wrote books of games.
And so it was that I was drawn to a photograph printed in Haaretz's magazine on Friday of a festive Tu Bishvat planting. There, too, you see serious-looking children in white shirts standing next to adults with hoes and spades: Among the adults are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan; Jewish National Fund chairmen Efi Stenzler and Eli Aflalo, and Be'er Sheva Mayor Ruvik Danilovich. In the photo they are shown planting a sapling, apparently a young carob tree, at the Be'er Sheva River Park.
But something was wrong with this picture. Did you notice what it was?
Nearly all of those present were wearing kippot for this event, although they are not religious. Tu Bishvat is not a religious holiday, and the Be'er Sheva River Park is not a holy place. Planting a tree in the land of Israel is an emotional act of optimism, but it is not a religious ritual. Nevertheless, the kippot are there - for no real reason, just because.
Quietly, over the past few decades, something startling has been happening in Israel. We might call it "shrinking Israeliness." Just like a young tree, no matter how promising, an ethos and narrative that doesn't get watered and nurtured will shrivel and eventually die. It will be replaced in the public space with other forces, stronger, better organized and better funded. In Israel's case, the most prominent of these forces is Jewishness.
Notice that I write "Jewishness," not "Judaism," which can be interpreted in different ways and which can indeed be a certain historical and cultural component of Israeliness. I am specifically referring to Jewishness, which subordinates all areas of life to the Jewish religion, and the version that sanctifies the most stringent halakhic practices and the shallowest folkloristic rituals.
It's been happening this whole time, everywhere, but most blatantly in the Israel Defense Forces, which, for better or worse, has been a prominent component of Israeliness since the founding of the state. There is another representative photo from this past month: the one of Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, slated to become the next Israel Air Force commander, hurrying after his appointment to place a note in the Western Wall.
We're talking about a secular officer who has been chosen to command the Israeli army's long and technologically advanced arm, and who has been presented to the public as the man who may lead a strategic attack on Iran. What exactly did he ask his God on the paper he stuck into the crevice between stones - that all our pilots should return safely and report good hits on their targets?
In the face of this national gallop toward kippot and prayer, Israeliness is withering, silent and paralyzed. Its children are drowning in their daily pressures, and in the evenings they are engrossed in their various reality shows. The spokesmen for Israeliness have given up and withdrawn. Its prophets are growing steadily fewer. Grandpa Moshele is dead.
So what is left of the courageous and ambitious attempt to create an alchemy of civic, cultural and practical nationalism? Maybe a messiah with great hair, who built a career on researching the meaning of "being Israeli," but who - upon entering politics in the name of saving Israeliness - instead chose the ideological battle cry, "Where's the money?"
