Deathmatch: Zionist v. Zionist

B"H

Following Shacharit this morning at New Rochelle's Congregation Anshe Sholom, the effusively eloquent Rabbi Ely Rosenzveig implored our minyan to remain an additional fifteen minutes to recite Tehilim for the tragedy developing in Gaza. I was seized with divided feelings, and my first inclination was to walk out. Instead, I stayed and set my kavanah in recognition of the profound anguish of the loss of Home -- understood perhaps most extensively, but surely not exclusively, in Jewish consciousness -- and also to adopt R' Rosenzveig's call for a unified Klal Yisraeyl.

I am glad that I stayed, but I want also to honor my reasons to leave in protest. Just after reciting the Kinot, our people's ritual catalog of explusions and exterminations from one end of the earth to the other, I don't think it could be much more critical for us to see that the current Gaza "disengagement" is categorically distinct and does not belong in the same litany. So much hyperbole has been lavished on the supposedly cruel novelty that the Jewish settlers in Gaza are being forced out by other Jews, rather than by non-Jewish armies or mobs. These lamentations are horribly shortsighted and naive. The loss of Home is a universally tragic experience, and this I do lament. But, truly, it is an enormous brakhah that Jews today are possessed of the self-determination to conduct this business at their own election and by their own power. If, G!d forbid, we were to lose all sense that this way is so much better than the travesties of the Kinot, then we should be cursed to experience the difference anew. Chas v'shalom.

Why would it be more painful to be "forced" out of one's Home by one's own people, rather than by a foreign power? Because we conventionally regard the force that would boot us from our place as the Enemy, and it is emotionally easier to accept as my Enemy some unknown Other, than a face well-known to my heart. But Home is a slippery fish, and we are all desperate to the point of distraction, trying to dig in our nails somewhere. For a man of soft palms and great privilege, even I have been forced into one Homelessness or another many times; and, if I were to be really honest, I would probably have to admit that the forces of expulsion were most often my intimate loved ones, and those "Enemies'" most dependable ally was me.

Displacement is tragically painful. It is also a fact of growth. Strictly speaking, in a world where everyone is struggling to find and keep Home, "Enemy" just denotes the fact that someone else is at least as Homeless as you are.

It is neither cruel nor novel that the practical strategies of Zionism are sharply disputed among Jews. Both the establishment and the disengagement of Israel's Gaza settlements express the excruciating struggle of a state to find its place. That identity politics exist and Jews have vociferous disagreements over them is a pretty lame cause for shock. Let's get over it. People are forced from their homes. That is the tragedy, and though cruel it should emphatically not be seen as novel! How many have been forced from their homes, there in the Land and here in the New World, that you and I can today take a turn at settlement? How many have found themselves in disengagement so that G!d could give us our opportunity to engage?

The Gaza settlers are not conquered. They have been made pawns and poster-children, scapegoated and lionized, and they do face a stark prospect of Homelessness. But they have the privilege of taking up this prospect directly with G!d, in full view of their people. That is the true novelty of the moment. The Gaza settler can say the following:

Israel, nation of my citizenship, in your merit and fallability, you elect to retract your sovereign protection from the territory of my home, and to cede this territory to the rule of another authority. This fact is now the law of the land, which halakhically I am commanded to honor, whether it be Jewish law or Gentile law, bad or good in my eyes (unless it were to bind me to certain categorically egregious sins, which this law does not). You, G!d, have set the time to run out on my status quo. You, Israel, require me to reinvent my Home or to lose it. If I possess the means, the preparation, and the strength to try this settler's life under Palestinian law, without the army's protection between me and the challenges of Arab neighbors, then I may choose allegiance to the Land of Israel over my allegiance to the State of Israel. Otherwise, I must rebuild a home within the State's borders. Either way, I am deeply pained at the loss of Home as I know it, and I can only pray that I may merit to find Your Torah in this shifting of the sand, and Redemption in the path I chart through it.

This is a unique opportunity in our history. Agree or disagree with the policy itself, this pullout is an expression of Jewish collective will, not a mere imposition from the faceless Other. In addition to significant practical advantages over past generations, such as long advance notice and relatively sympathetic and accommodating authorities, the displacees of Gaza voted with their nation, and their political opponents on the matter still regard them as being of the same people. The pain falls disproportionately, as it always does, but it is nevertheless a great blessing to take that pain within one's identity, rather than from an outer Enemy -- if, please G!d, that is what the settlers choose to do. (Avi Farhan already has, in my favorite recent display of true Zionism.)

The value of peoplehood, of "extended family," is that its achdut, its unity, is harder to deny than that of humanity (or Creation) in general. It makes a more urgent wedge to honesty, to the realization that my pain is ultimately between me and G!d, and my Homelessness is a universal problem.

The essence of Tisha b'Av is to mourn sinat chinam, the "groundless hatred" that perpetuates our people's exile. The invitation of Tisha b'Av (the zimun of the z'man, so to speak), is to set ourselves to a better path. So as I don my t'fillin this afternoon, my prayer is for celebration, that this Tisha b'Av may be indicating the way toward g'ulah, our Redemption. Because the unimaginable pain of our brothers and sisters in Gaza, at being forced out of Home as they have known it, is not itself a cause for celebration, but we and they merited this time the opportunity to see that pain in a new configuration: where there is no Other, no Enemy, and no sinat chinam. This is how we should strive to see the current situation, and indeed all other territorial disputes. There should be no more Homelessness at all, but where G!d may deem it necessary, this is how we should pray for it to be, for all Yisraeyl and all nations. In a largely unsung way, the Gaza tragedy whispers a glorious simchah. Savor it, share it, and sing praises to haShem!