Israel at Sixty: The Persistence of Vision: Competing narratives

by Barry Leff

One of the things that is fascinating about living in Israel is the way that myth informs reality, and how sometimes it's hard to separate myth FROM reality -- with consequences that are profound.

Last year, when I was still living the life of a congregational rabbi in the US, I gave a sermon on the topic of these "conflicting narratives," and how the stories that the Israelis tell and the stories that the Palestinians tell about the founding of Israel are widly different, and how those different narratives are a real barrier to peace and understanding; you can read the sermon by clicking here . In recent weeks we've seen the depth of competing narratives WITHIN the Israeli population.

The terrorist who killed 8 students at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva was not picking a random target.

He picked an institution that is one of the preeminent centers of the religious Zionist movement. The religious Zionists are the hard core of the "settler" movement. The basic religious Zionist narrative goes something like this: God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people; we were exiled from our land nearly 2,000 years ago, and now, after 2,000 years of longing to return, we have come home. It is a mitzvah to settle the complete land of Israel, which includes all of Judea and Samaria, a.k.a. the West Bank. It is forbidden to give up any of the land to the Palestinians; after all, God gave it to us, so in a sense we're not even allowed to give it to other people. Mercaz Harav is closely associated with the Gush Emunim movement, which is the most prominent of the movements encouraging settlements in the West Bank.

In an article in Haaretz, a leading Israeli newspaper with a somewhat "left and intellectual" slant -- sort of the NY Times of Israel -- Gideon Levy wrote "Still, it would be appropriate to recall, even at this difficult hour, what this yeshiva has brought forth. Without the settlement enterprise, peace might have reigned here already; without the Gush Emunim movement, supported by successive Israeli governments, there would be no settlements; and without the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, there would be no Gush Emunim. This institution, then, was the cradle of the settlement enterprise and its driving force. Most of the students killed in the terrorist attack were second-generation settlers."

Levy challenges the religious Zionist narrative on political grounds. Tel Aviv University history professor Shlomo Sand (dabbling in a period of history not his specialty) challenges it on historical grounds. In an article in Haaretz called "Shattering a National Mythology," Sand is quoted as saying "the description of the Jews as a wandering and self-isolating nation of exiles, "who wandered across seas and continents, reached the ends of the earth and finally, with the advent of Zionism, made a U-turn and returned en masse to their orphaned homeland," is nothing but 'national mythology.'"

According to Sand, the Jews of today are not the descendants of the Jews who lived in Israel 2000 years ago. Sand claims there was no exile -- the Romans didn't kick people out. He claims that Judaism used to pursue converts, and the Ashkenazi Jews of northern / eastern Europe are descendants of the Khazars, a people whose king converted to Judaism in the 8th century. Sand says the Sefardi Jews are mostly descendants of Dahia al-Kahina and other Berber tribes that converted to Judaism in the 6th - 7th centuries.

As if that's not bad enough, Sand claims that the real descendants of the Jews who lived in Israel 2,000 years ago are the Palestinians! Farmers, claim Sand, don't move when governments change. The Jewish farmers of 2,000 years ago stayed in place, and converted to Islam when the Muslims came through.

The problem I have with the narrative of the religious Zionists is that it totally ignores the fact that there have been other people -- Arabs -- living here for the last 2,000 years. That inconvenient fact is relegated to irrelevancy. The problem I have with Sand's narrative is he is trying to undo the Jewish people's profound connection to the land.

The truth, as is often the case, is to be found somewhere in between the two extremes.

I agree with Sand that there was no "exile." The Romans did not kick all the Jews out. But MANY Jews did voluntarily leave. Why? After the destruction of the Temple Israel had some very hard times economically, for a very long time. It was hard to make a decent living here. There have always been people who would pick up and leave to look for a better life elsewhere -- immigration, legal or not, is hardly a 21st century phenomenon.

And when those Jews moved and lived in different places, intermarriage happened. Just as it happens today. Again, it's not something new. There were converts who chose to join us. How else would one explain the fact that Polish Jews look like people from Poland, and Iranian Jews look like other Iranians? If we had been strictly endogamous for the last 2,000 years, we would all look like Arabs. But we don't.

But just because there were some converts and some intermingling of the blood lines, does not mean that there is no real connection to the land. I believe the Jews of today mostly have some genetic component from the Jews who stood at Sinai, and they have a lot of outside genetic material as well. But does it matter that the Jews are not all 100% pure descendants of the Jews who stood at Sinai?

The rabbis of 2,000 years ago built a strong connection to the land of Israel into the theology and the practice of the Jewish religion. A convert once wrote to the 12th century rabbi Maimonides (Rambam) and asked "can I say the blessing "God of my ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?" Rambam assured him that despite the lack of genetic connection, he can indeed say that blessing -- for all converts are spiritual descendants of Abraham, just like any other Jew.

The Haaretz article does not say whether Sand is secular or religious -- but I'd be willing to bet he's secular. I don't believe a religious Jew would reduce the Jewish connection to Israel and the concept of Jewish nationhood to genetics. Judaism is not just a "people" -- it is also a religion, and part of that religion includes a connection to the land of Israel.

But the moderates don't seem to get much press. I guess we don't sell newspapers because we're not exciting. We're not trying to expel the Arabs and we're not trying to expel the "Jewish" part of the Jewish state.

I realize it can be hard for people outside Israel to keep track of the different parties and movements in Israel. I'm religious, and I'm a Zionist, but I'm not a religious Zionist. One of the frustrations of living in Israel is that the voices of the extremes -- the voices that would deny a Jewish connection to Israel on the one hand, and the voices that would deny an Arab connection to the land of Israel on the other hand -- drown out the voices of the moderates.

Richard Nixon was the person who brought the concept of the "Silent Majority" to public consciousness when he claimed there was a silent majority of Americans whose views were being drowned out by the vocal minority that was demonstrating. As a moderate living in Israel, I really feel like part of a "silent majority." Then again, given how many different political parties and opinions we have here, I suppose it's really only part of a "silent plurality!"