Approaching 38 Years of Living in Israel: Reflections for the Present and the Future

Approaching 38 Years of Living in Israel: Reflections for the Present and the Future
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In a few weeks, by June 24 or 25 (I never remember the exact date), I will reach the milestone of having lived in Israel for 38 years. By now, it is more than half of my life! It is an occasion to pause and reflect, especially since we have just passed the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War of June 1967.

I grew up in an intensely Jewish and Zionist home, in the Jewish shtetl of Miami Beach, just a flight away from Idlewild (now JFK) airport in New York City, in the late 1940’s to the early 1960’s. My father, Rabbi Leon Kronish, of blessed memory, moved to the Negev of America in 1944 and was the Founding Senior Rabbi at Temple Beth Sholom for 40 years as an active rabbi until he suffered a stroke in 1984. He was one of the great Reform Jewish Zionist leaders of his time, and therefore Zionism--especially the dominant Labor Zionist ideology of the period--was very much part of my upbringing. It was in the chicken soup my mother cooked, in the living room where my parents entertained countless leaders from the early years of the state of Israel, in the synagogue, where many of Israel's leaders spoke from that pulpit, and in the many Israel Bonds and Federation/UJA dinners held at famous hotels on Miami Beach. (for more on my father, one can read the biography by Henry Green. Gesher Vakesher. Bridges and Bonds. The Life of Leon Kronish, 1996).

It was no accident, therefore, that I spent my first summer in Israel, after high school, in 1964, as a student volunteer on Kibbutz Kfar Menachem, a kibbutz of the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair (Young Guard) movement, where my father's high school friend, Julie Freeman, who became Yehuda Ben Chorin when he moved to Israel, lived with his family. It was actually on my this first visit to Israel that I fell in love with the country -- with its pioneering spirit, its socialist values, and its dreams of being a "light unto the nations". Unfortunately, much of this spirit and the values that went with it, have disappeared from Israel, and it is difficult to say anymore that we are a "light unto the nations" or that our "leaders" even retain this aspirational quality.

After spending two separate long periods in Israel in my student years--one in 1966 for a half year on the Hyatt Institute of Brandeis University --and one in 1970-71, as a visiting graduate student on the beautiful Givat Ram campus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with my wife, Amy-- I was hooked. This was the place where I felt most at home as a Jew and a human being. This was a small growing, idealistic society in which I could make a meaningful contribution. This is where I belonged if I wanted to be part of the unfolding of Jewish history in our time.

More than half a life-time later, I still share these basic feelings about Israel, but so much as changed, some for the better, and some for the worse.

Let's start with what has changed for the better. Israel is a modern miracle. After nearly 70 years, it is a strong country with a very solid economy. Believe it or not, most of our institutions are much more efficient and effective than they used to be in the old days, although our bureaucracies can still be very annoying (as are all bureaucracies). In addition, Jewish culture thrives and is continually developing here, especially in Jerusalem, where Jewish cultural institutions continue to grow and engage people of all ages in a myriad of options for Jewish learning and Jewish participation in the culture.

But the old socialist ideals have all but disappeared from the horizon. The gap here between rich and poor is astounding, one of the highest in the world, and growing every day. The kibbutz movement has been mostly privatized into bedroom communities and suburban living, and most of our "leaders" don't come from the kibbutz ethos any more. Once upon a time, Martin Buber wrote an essay about the kibbutz movement that was called "The Experiment that has not failed." He could not write this today.

Instead, the ethos and culture of Labor Zionism has been replaced by that of the Likud and its Revisionist hard-line ideology, and other right-wing parties, who clearly favor capitalism (the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer) over any kind of socialist or egalitarian society, which would genuinely seek to create fair policies for the minorities and the disenfranchised in our midst. But the liberal wing of the Likud--led by Dan Meridor, Benny Begin and Ruby Rivlin--which cared to some extent about democracy and minorities-- is in sharp decline in favor of hooliganist Judaism and Zionism represented by several fanatic leaders in the extreme right wing of the Likud and in political parties to the right of the Likud, such as Naftali Bennett Avigdor Liberman and others. These people are setting the tone today in contemporary Israeli consciousness, and in political life. They are deceptive and dangerous people who are leading Israel to international isolation and to one disaster after the next.

Most of all, the rise of the right into the center of the Israeli political mainstream has just about completely destroyed "the Peace Process" (does anyone even remember what it was anymore?). For the last 10 years, our Prime Minister and his buddies consistently and brazenly do everything in their power almost all the time to debunk, belittle and betray the peace process, to which they give lip service only rarely, such as when an American president comes to visit and then they put on a big phony show. The abandonment of any serious commitment to peace--at the same time as the occupation of the West Bank goes into its 51st year, with settlement expansion ruining any real chances of a peace agreement that will be acceptable and practical for both sides--is my biggest disappointment in Israel today.

You may have noticed that I put the word "leaders" in quotes. We don't have any serious visionary leaders any more, not in Israel, and certainly not in the United States. It is hard to be hopeful about politics, in both countries.

So, where is hope to be found?

I find it in civil society organizations, and in the people in many of these organizations, which are struggling to keep the hope for peace alive, such as Hands of Peace, Kids for Peace, Creativity for Peace and others. I find it in the work of Shatil and the New Israel Fund, which help hundreds of good and generally underfunded organizations in Israel to fight for religious pluralism, social justice, and caring for the underprivileged and the oppressed in our society. And I find it in the work of educators, in many formal and informal settings throughout Israel, who are still committed to old-fashioned liberal ideas, like the dignity of every human being, and the concept of democracy, which includes rights for minorities.

I have also found commitment to humanistic values, religious liberalism, democracy and a shared society among the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel--Muslims and Christians--with whom I have been in dialogue for decades. Many of my encounters over many years with them have inspired me and given me hope for the future, despite all the obstacles and challenges which face us. I have written about these people in many of my blog posts over the last several years and I plan to continue to do so.

Most of all, I find hope when I see the beautiful smiles of my grandchildren, who fortunately do not yet read the daily newspapers like I do, and don't share my daily angst. Their happy and positive attitude to life is heart-warming. Their parents shower them with love, constant learning, awesome appreciation of life, sensitivity to other human beings and caring about their environment. If you really want to know where I garner my hope, this is it, in the next generation.

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