SAPIR: A Journal Exploring the Future of the American Jewish Community

Zionism Remains a Freedom Struggle
From SAPIR'S issue on Zionism / By Bret Stephens

Seen at a distance, Zionism is just the Jewish branch of the global phenomenon known as nationalism. In many senses it is. But Zionism isn’t mere Jewish nationalism, given that Jewishness isn’t merely a national or ethnic identity; it is also a religious and moral one. And the goal of Zionism isn’t merely to give Jews “a place among the nations” (per the title of Benjamin Netanyahu’s 1993 book). It’s to make Israel a light unto the nations.

The point may seem flattering, but it isn’t always an easy one to accept. It imposes a set of moral burdens and expectations, many of them unfair. “Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms,” Eric Hoffer wrote in 1968. “But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in the world.”

Hoffer was right: Israel continues to labor under what might be called a moral colonialism — typically coming from those who are loudest in denouncing the legacy of colonialism. The Jewish state is expected to conduct its battles with greater regard for the safety of its enemies than for that of its own people. It is expected to make diplomatic concessions that put the lives of its own citizens at serious risk. It is expected to strengthen its “democratic” character, but only if its democratic choices conform to progressive sensibilities. It is expected, when struck, to turn the other cheek.

These expectations aren’t wrong for holding Israel to high standards: Nobody should hold Israel to a higher standard than Zionists themselves. But they are wrong when they are based on ethical concepts inimical to Jewish traditions, ideals, and practical realities. Israel did not liberate itself politically from colonial masters merely to remain a captive of their ideas.

A Jewish state is not just a political and security concept. It is also a civilizational opportunity; a chance to rediscover, rearticulate, and redevelop a uniquely Jewish way of thinking, being, and doing in the world; a means of finding out how a culture that was both stunted and enriched in its long exile can, with the benefit of sovereignty, create a healthier model of human community. Are there ways of doing politics, Jewishly, that aren’t simply a facsimile of the way politics are done in other advanced democracies? Is there a way of managing differences in society, and of enriching the human experience in the modern state, that is not only distinctive but can also offer a model for other nations wrestling with similar dilemmas?

Three areas come to mind:

• Can the tension between identity and freedom, which elsewhere has led to so much conflict and repression, achieve a more sustainable and dynamic balance? The freedoms of modern liberal societies are almost limitless; these freedoms are especially precious to those with the inner resources to make the most of them. But they come at a cost: the disconnection of the individual from his community, the lack of a sense of personal purpose, the moral entropy that often goes with what Rudyard Kipling called the “Gods of the Market Place.” On the flip side, a powerful sense of identity, tradition, and place offers its own emotional and spiritual comforts. But it’s frequently stifling, most of all to the free spirits and free thinkers who usually move the world forward, and which Jewish civilization produces in such abundance.
  
• Can there be a model of religious-secular coexistence that is less frictional, less distanced, and more mutually enriching? Contrary to the hopes or expectations of some of the early Zionists, a Jewish state was never going to leave Judaism in the atavistic dust. And contrary to the beliefs or predictions of some of today’s religious Zionists or Haredim, the state of Israel cannot succeed without the cultural and economic dynamism of its secular side. Similar fantasies typify secular and religious expectations in other countries, not least the United States. Much of the challenge rests in finding ways to de-escalate secular-religious divisions at the legal level and engage the two sides in different layers of life — pedagogical, spiritual, and social.

• Can democratic states with large, and largely separate, cultural minorities find a middle path between bitter communal rivalry and complete assimilation? The intercommunal violence of 2021 was a loud alarm for many Israelis that not only have they neglected this challenge, but also — in legislation such as the 2018 nation-state law and the neglect of basic policing in Israeli-Arab communities — that they have moved in the wrong direction. On the other hand, the creation of last year’s extraordinarily broad coalition government, along with the signing of the Abraham Accords, gives reason to hope that there are hidden reserves of good will between Jews and Arabs, as well as opportunities to create a far more inclusive Israel than the one we have today.

To say that Zionism remains a freedom struggle does not merely vindicate the distance it has traveled so far. It reminds us that the journey is far from over.

Invest in Philanthropy
From SAPIR'S Issue on aspiration / By Felicia Herman

We need a moonshot for Jewish philanthropy. Why not aim for universal Jewish giving?
This would mean not only that all Jews would give, but that some portion of every Jewish person’s giving would go to Jewish or Israeli causes.

Such an idea touches on a core Jewish value: The Talmud teaches that giving is incumbent on everyone — “even a poor person who is sustained from tzedakah must also perform tzedakah” (Gittin 7b). For Jews, giving is not a rich person’s game. It’s supposed to be a mass, universal experience, and Jewish wisdom and history are rife with examples of why and how mass giving should happen. It’s also an idea reinforced by the American Jewish experience of being expected, from the days of Peter Stuyvesant onward, to take care of our own, and nearly four centuries of proudly having done so.

This powerful idea can also serve as a rejoinder to contemporary complaints about Jewish philanthropy. Don’t like what someone else gives to, what their politics are, or how they made their money? Great news: Since you’re also supposed to give, you can use your giving to help make whatever change you want to see in the world. Worried that your money doesn’t matter? Join together with others, in a giving circle or a Federation or another collective giving enterprise, to have a greater impact than you could have on your own.

But the key takeaway is: No one is supposed to opt out — never mind opting out and then complaining.

Universal Jewish giving to Jewish causes is an excellent way to ensure not only that Jewish communal institutions thrive, but also that their work reflects the full diversity of the Jewish people itself.

How do we get there?
Tzedakah (giving, charity, philanthropy) needs to be embedded in all Jewish educational and engagement efforts. I’m not talking about fundraising. I’m talking about tzedakah both as a way into big Jewish questions and ideas, and also as a behavioral muscle that needs to be exercised. Everything we do in Jewish organizations and institutions can be deepened, illuminated, and explored by integrating conversations about and experiences with tzedakah. Philosophically, discussing questions about giving (to whom, why, how, and how much) touches on the deepest questions about human responsibility and community. Educationally, there’s no better way to learn deeply about any issue (Israel, gender, disabilities, etc.) than to survey the organizational landscape in service of investing in it.

And attitudinally, giving through the lens of Jewish wisdom can help build the type of Jewish citizenry we need: humble, generous, interconnected, knowledgeable, and engaged.

To Err is Human; to Disagree, Jewish
From SAPIR'S Issue on cancellation / By David Wolpe

Therefore it is improper on the grounds of love of inquiry and knowledge to dismiss anything that contradicts your view . . .  even if the words run counter to your belief or religion. One should not say to him, “Do not speak! Shut your mouth!” For otherwise the true religion would not be clarified. —Maharal of Prague (Be’er HaGolah, Well 1:7)

How should we respond when someone promulgates a view with which we disagree, or one that we find offensive, repugnant, even dangerous? What is our approach?

First, we need to separate the view from the individual who espouses it. We can argue without attacking. Once you assault an individual instead of his opinion, or conflate an individual with his opinion (“you are an anti-Zionist”), you make it much harder to change his mind — he is even more on the defensive, even more entrenched, and his view is now his identity, not simply his opinion.

Second, we must engage. Instead of walking away, shouting down, or deriding disagreeable opinions, we must take the more difficult but more responsible course of listening and marshaling opposing arguments. Even if you think your opinion is obviously correct, arguing for it is productive and important, both to clarify your reasoning to yourself, and to expose your views to the scrutiny of others. Immediate rejection is less helpful in the long run than serious engagement.

“I’m the boss” is also not an answer. Argument from authority, including “lived experience,” is never sufficient. Despite the reverence for teachers in the Jewish tradition, for example, there are limitations. The great Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin puts it this way: “A student must not accept his teacher’s words if he has an objection to them. Sometimes a student will be right, just as a small piece of wood can set a large one aflame.” Many teachers throughout history have refused to give their students the space to disagree, but Rabbi Hayyim realizes that to silence someone is not to answer him.

Third, we must take care to argue in the right way. How one argues is as important as the freedom to do so. The Talmud states: “Regarding two scholars who live in the same town and are not kind to one another, of them Scripture says, ‘I gave them laws that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live’ (Ezekiel 20:25)”(Megillah 32a). In other words, you can sour the very teaching itself if you do not present it in a way that can be heard. The rulings of the school of Hillel are preferred to those of Shammai not because they were more logical, but because Hillel and his students were “kindly and modest, studied both their own views and those of the house of Shammai, and they quoted the words of the house of Shammai before their own” (Eruvin 13b).

Social media is the antithesis of such generosity. It might simply not be possible to use the medium for the messages we want to promote and for the arguments we want to have. People are regularly belittled, doxxed, called all sorts of names, and associated with views that are not their own, though their words can be twisted to accommodate them. We need to use such platforms as town squares, not firing ranges — more of a place where views can be civilly exchanged than a mechanism for target practice. This requires an elementary respect for the humanity of those who disagree, and the expectation that such respect will prove an ultimate good. As Talmud scholar Richard Hidary notes in Dispute for the Sake of Heaven, “the motivation directing attitudes of pluralism is peace, that is, communal unity through acceptance of diversity.”

Social media is too powerful and ubiquitous to simply renounce. Instead we should subject it to the same rules we apply to interaction in real life: Would I say this to a person’s face? Do I use the platform as a tool for connection or a channel for aggression? The medium is new and we need to learn, as a child learns socializing rules, what is permissible and what violates human decency. Attacks, snide mockery, and cruelty should be off the table.

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By BRET STEPHENS