A Letter to My Beloved Israel
Dearest Israel, Ani mitga-at lach – I yearn for you, old friend. I fell in love with you on my first trip in 1968 as a college junior from Brandeis fulfilling a dream to spend a year abroad. And I have fallen in love with you over and over again each time I visited and lived there.
I remember when we first met on the tarmac of Ben Gurion airport all those years ago as I began my junior year abroad – a year of coming home really, fulfilling my greatest 20-year-old dreams, immersing in the history, culture, and love of my people on the very spot, digging deep into my national roots at Hebrew University, traversing the country, enfolded into the arms of each of your residents – Jews, Arabs and Armenians. Over the many decades that I have come back to you, my love has never wavered even as my mind and moral sensibilities continue to parse out and assess the way in which you have evolved compared to the vision of your pioneers, not unlike the way in which I have learned to parse your sacred texts, at once in communion with their lessons in justice and compassion for all creation, and at once in conflict and angst with all the aberrations from that pure vision.
I remember the joy of reading restaurant names in Hebrew signage: Melech Felafel – King Felafel on Rechov Melech George, King George Street in Jerusalem, Atara Café on Ben Yehuda Street, where I sat sipping café hafuch – a precursor to a latte, while microphones on the tops of buildings blasted throughout downtown blocks “The Eagle has landed.” I remember the joy of picking pomelos (that’s a cross between a grapefruit and an orange) fresh off the trees in the village of Kfar Vitkin, and of drinking freshly squeezed juices of every fruit or vegetable known and unknown to me in kiosk’s on every street corner, and along the roads in and out of towns. I remember walking the streets at all hours day or night, in crowds or alone, with not a tinge of fear. I remember sitting in a lecture hall at Hebrew University on Givat Ram and listening intently to the voice of David Ben Gurion in the center of the room, with tears in my eyes, either from the bright fluorescent lights, or my ill-fitting contact lenses, or simply because I was in the same room with Israel’s first Prime Minister. I remember sitting outside the rustic home just outside of Jerusalem in the one-room home of the sister of a new friend, Musa Abu Rumi around a firepit in the middle of the space, cupping lamb stew in my two palms. I remember falling asleep on the beach in Eilat during Sukkot school vacation, and waking up surrounded by RV campers of Israeli families also on vacation, who had driven right onto the sand. I remember camping at the foot of Mt. Sinai one year after the Six Day War, with fellow students and quietly snaking our way to the monastery of Santa Katerina at the base of the mountain, in the middle of the night after hearing the sound of missiles in the sky (which turned out to be a test by the Israelis). In truth, until the turn of the millenium, it was the only time I was afraid in Israel. I remember so many Shabbat and holiday dinners at the homes of friends and strangers who became friends. I remember the exhilaration of seeing in front of me the locations of sites mentioned in the Bible on so many study trips in which I participated, and congregational trips which I helped lead. Every sighting, every experience, every meal, every human encounter made me feel whole, blessed, and in awe of what is larger than life, more spiritual than any prayer, and more significant than the cycle of life.
Even the gut-wrenching and fearful images (from my own protected safe spaces here in North America, to be clear) of Israelis wearing gas masks and diving into their bomb shelters during the Yom Kippur War, the ensuing intifadas, and each and every wave of short-term terrorist incursions from the War of Independence until right now, did not flatten my diasporic hope in you as the sovereign solution to the Zionist dream and the survival of the Jewish people.
For me, each and every successive visit to Israel, each overlay to the very first, deepened my attachment even as my adulting sense of politics and justice and morality gave way to frequent disapproval of behavior and policy, but never doubting the purest vision of Zionism for the Jewish people. Exactly parallel in age to the state of Israel’s existence, from idealistic youth to ever emerging adulthood and beyond – Israel – you have always been there for me, a debt I can’t imagine repaying during my lifetime. Most assuredly, Israel, you built for me a solid foundation on which to pridefully build my own Jewish identity, an identity and a belonging to the Jewish community that has not been forged because of negative external challenges, but rather by uplifting and inspiring sparks set in motion by our Jewish culture, our Jewish ritual, our language, our Jewish ethics, our Jewish vision for a Messianic human justice, and the beautiful and endearing land of Israel.
Alas, my beloved Israel is today a changed country, the Israel before October 7 no longer exists. Today, my beloved Israel, you have only questions, no answers. You have no plans to show me how the land is flourishing, how you are spearheading technological, agricultural, medical, and social innovations. You are only planning for air raid sirens, routes to safe rooms, and ways to keep your precious ones safe, when nowhere is safe. Of course, you cannot entertain me, a tourist and foreigner; you have no time to even make your own memories.
Still, I am so proud of you. Beloved Israel, you have mobilized over 50,000 volunteers from far and wide to your teeny tiny land to help you and brave the dangers along with you. You have come together to support each other in your grief, in your trauma, and in all your daily needs, and you have, above all, taken care of your children, especially those survivors of murdered families and those displaced around the country. You come together in great numbers and with single-minded purpose even in your darkest hour to protest to unsustainable governmental policies that delay the return of the hostages and perpetuate the misguided corrupt and power-driven government.
You know, it was the genius of the kibbutz, the agricultural collective, that scaffolded your growth in the early years. The kibbutz allowed for meager resources, both human financial, to be shared, for the proverbial choma umigdal, wall and watch tower, to be built to protect all the kibbutzniks within, and for mutual sharing, caring, and developing the land and its produce, meaning both food for the body and fuel for economic and democratic growth. The kibbutz structure did not survive the test of time, driven by global economics and technology. But, Israel, you have created out of chaos, confusion and despair, a “kibbutz of the heart.”
Living with not knowing must be excruciating! What will today look like? What will the day after look like? Can peace ever be an outcome? How do you live surrounded externally and internally with enemies who want to destroy you? Can you hold compassion for the innocent in Gaza? Can you continue to defend your country all the while with the sacrifice of so many, hostages, civilians, and soldiers alike? Do you feel powerless, and distraught at the state of your government? Can you listen to those you disagree with? And who will you be when you come though this time? Is it possible to make sense of the Israel of today without having to know the answers to the Israel of tomorrow?
Well, here’s where most of us stand at this moment: Everything that we thought about Israel has been shattered. Our beliefs have crashed. No longer can we believe that Israel is a safe haven for Jews. No longer can we believe that independence meant pogroms could no longer happen and that Zionism is the answer to end the cycle of destructive Jewish history. Some of us are shattered in our belief that God would be there for us when human abilities fail.
Frankly, if we don’t believe the other side wants peace, should we keep trying? Our response to the Holocaust was to get power, but if we have to be brutal to survive, what does that do to the moral health of our society? Can power and morality co-exist? Israeli scholar, Dr Tal Becker, who among his many achievements authored the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020, insists that the IDF is fighting the Gaza war in a just way despite the enemy not operating with the same principles. Are we convinced? Yet, I know I personally remain committed to the deep belief that the need for a democratic homeland, committed to equal rights and religious freedoms should govern our actions.
Beloved Israel, I owe a great debt to you. How can I begin to fulfil that debt to you at this moment? I know it’s not about making new memories right now. It’s about connecting to all my family in Israel, and Israeli family has no familial limits. I know I need to better understand the complexities of the crisis and all the forces that conflict with each other as well as those that are uniting you. I need to learn from you how to live and act in the uncomfortable space of not knowing. I must have the courage to dream about tomorrow and pray that tomorrow will come soon and that tomorrow will be the time for peace. Even if my prayers are not answered during these High Holydays, I pray that my prayers are heard by you, and that you know I am praying for you, my beloved Israel.
The biblical Book of Ecclesiastes reminds us that a season is set for everything. A time for slaying and a time for healing. A time for loving and a time for hating. A time for war and a time for peace. We must have the courage to dream about tomorrow because the element of time is unchangeable, and yet time changes everything in our lives, including the possibility of the transition from war to peace.
It’s time for me to compose a new letter to my beloved Israel. It will begin with: May our Teshuvah this Yom Kippur, our cycle of returning to our purer selves radiate out to Israel and all the warring world so that lives can be lived, memories made, and dreams fulfilled! Am Yisrael Chai!
