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Charting Israel’s Role in Progressive Jewish Identity

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Anyone who is Jewish and who is not living in Israel has made a conscious choice: the choice to disown the very concept of “diaspora.”

Those of us who have not made aliyah (or who have made aliyah and yet returned to our natal lands) have declared that we are not a “scattered” remnant. Why? Because we could gather ourselves into the Jewish homeland at any time.

Instead, we have chosen to identify ourselves as Jewish where we are, to put down roots in lands other than The Land. This choice is not, to be clear, necessarily a choice to refuse Eretz Yisrael, the particular place; or the particular people; or the particular government– though it could be any or all of those. The choice to remain where we are is, however, a refusal of the metaphors of exile and home. We are not in exile because we do not wish to go “home.”

The ironic result of this largely undiscussed choice is that, consciously or not, every Jew living outside of the Israeli state is defined by it. That is, we are defined by our refusal to choose Israel. You could say that we are defined by our refusal to be defined.

Israel thus cannot help but loom as a negative in our identity-formation. It is what we are not, or are not yet. It is the homeland that is not our home.

One result is that Israel is never a neutral territory for Jews living anywhere else. If we continue to define ourselves as Jewish, we cannot simply ignore the Israeli state. We are always necessarily in relationship with it.

This relationship is, in many ways, most difficult for those of us on the left. When the Israeli state acts in accord with our values, then the disjuncture between who we are (Jews not living in Israel), and who we could be (Israeli Jews) grows smaller. During the height of the kibbutz area, for example, many Jewish progressives in the United States felt at ease with the Jewish state.

That has changed. Growing understanding of Palestinian oppression, including web-based coverage of the two Intifadas and the blood shed in Gaza, has led left-leaning Jews in the United States and Europe to find that there is a growing gap in values between ourselves and the Israeli state.

What I am saying may be counter-intuitive. It might seem that the wider the gap grows between our values and those we perceive guiding the Israeli state, the easier it would be to distinguish a Jewish identity unique from that of the Israeli state. However, the reverse is true.

Israel is the “negative space” against which we construct our Jewish identity. Think of an Escher drawing, in which a blink of an eye can flip the picture from negative to positive space, so that what was background becomes foreground, what was essentially invisible to the eye becomes visible. Jewish identity outside of Israel is an Escher drawing. We construct that identity against the Israel we have not chosen. Yet, at any moment, the image can be flipped, and we can be defined by that which we have defined ourselves against.

Jewish Voice for Peace got it right when they yelled, “Not in My Name.” They understood on a visceral level that U.S. Jewry and the values and actions of the Jewish State cannot be separated. When Israel acts, it acts in the name of the Jewish homeland. How can one be Jewish and not be named in that way? Israel defines the space against which U.S. Jews construct their own identity.

This relationship is not healthy for either Israelis or for Jews outside of Israel. To thrive, the Jewish community must find a way to change our self-definition. The solutions, however, are difficult. Must Jews outside of Israel simply decide that the Israeli state speaks for us as Jews? Must Israel, as Daniel Boyarin and others have suggested, simply give up being the Jewish homeland and become a nation like any other? Or, as I hope, can we reconfigure our narratives of exile and disaspora to accomodate a diversity of Jewish experiences?

Exilic identity was an easier identity, as it posited a homeland that did not exist, an imaginary homeland that we could make our own. Yet, we have models in exile that might be worth following. The Babylonian sages were in exile, yet we know they recorded the opinion of Israeli rabbis and even sent emissaries to them on occasion. They seem to have negotiated a non-diasporic, non-Israeli identity. How?

We must seek out such models. Most of all, however, we must come to terms with the reality that the State of Israel presents an existential question for the Judaism we have known over the past 1500 years. Of course, we would rather not live in a time of existential questions. Yet, while such questions are always difficult, they are not always lethal. The fall of Temple sacrifice led to Rabbinic Judaism. Rather than be afraid of the future, I am full of hope as Judaism enters what may be a whole new era.