The Meaning of Life in Four Difficult Steps

Photo from Max Pixel.

In my previous column, I ended with the question: How do we defend our hearts when someone is not acting lovingly toward us? Let’s cut to the chase. Here are the four steps: Do your duty. Find bliss when possible. When you can’t find bliss, be resilient. Everything makes a difference.

“Do your duty” does not provide an immediate answer to life’s questions, but this guidance helps organize consciousness. I have counseled many people stuck in anger. Inevitably, this involves venting and blaming, and wanting my counsel in how to change the other person. “Do your duty” turns the pointer of consciousness away from the other person, and onto yourself. Your duty, when you are angry, is “thou shalt not.” You can be angry, but do not express it. Remember the four C’s: No criticizing, complaining, condemning (including accusing, blaming, labeling, unkind comparing, contemptuous gestures of face and hands, etc.) and no escalating conflict.

When anger tempts you, run it through what I call the wisdom mill, not the bottling factory. For example, ask yourself what you want the other person to do. Not understand, know, realize or be aware of. What I want them to do now — a clear, rational, achievable behavior, with a time stamp on it. Not, “I want to be affirmed.” Instead, “I would like you to praise me.” Yes, that clear. It feels weird to say such a thing, but that is what “I want to be affirmed” often means.
(Sometimes people say, “But they should know what I want if they loved me” and I think “What are you, 14?”).

Here is a life truth: We couple up with people who, by definition, regularly don’t know what we want and/or don’t know how to give it. There is a reason for this, that I will discuss another time.

Doing your duty often reminds you that you are not center of the universe, that you often will not get your way.

A corollary to, “No Criticizing, Complaining, Condemning or escalating Conflict”: Never try to persuade a resistant person to do, know, understand, realize or be aware of anything. Just ask them for what you want, and be ready to take no for answer. And decide what you are going to do next.

If you are going to do nothing, do nothing. Arguing typically won’t make it better. Whatever you are going to do, don’t be petty, passive-aggressive or resentful. That never makes things better.

“But,” people observe, “then they just get their way!” Yes, doing your duty often reminds you that you are not center of the universe, that you often will not get your way. And they were probably going to get their way anyway, just after lots of arguing.

I find that couples and families, or any group of people brought together by common purpose, find the bliss inherent in human relationships when they work on reducing toxic speech between people, and reduce toxic emotions within.

And when (heaven forfend!) someone aside from you gets their way, be resilient. However meaning in life is constructed, it is not from “I get my way or I will get angry or depressed.”
Judaism is a spiritual path of duty. We observe mitzvot, commandments, whether one focuses on the moral or the ritual. Leviticus 19:18 does not say, “Do not seek revenge nor bear a grudge unless you are really angry; if that’s the case, then go ahead a bear a grudge.” People say, “But it is natural to resent people who have hurt you.” Well, if it were not human nature to resent, then the Torah would not command against it. The Jewish tradition understands human nature; it just demands that we transcend it. One might say that transcending the pitfalls of human nature (the yetzer ha-ra) is at the core of Jewish spirituality.

The pits of human nature are often bridged in the smallest of ways. In a difficult conversation, the smallest act of empathy or remorse, as the case may be, can lead back to the bliss of finding meaning together.

In sum, when someone else might be shirking their duty, you do yours. You be the one who leads on the path back to the beauty possible in human relationships. Be resilient – don’t give in to the pitfalls in human nature.

As you will see in future columns, everything matters.

Rabbi Mordecai Finley is the spiritual leader of Ohr HaTorah and professor of Jewish Thought at the Academy of Jewish Religion, California.

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An Ode to Motherhood

Photo from PxHere.

When I was in my early 20s, I gently placed motherhood into the realm of: There is no question I want to do this, but later, much later. First, I need to explore and change the world. Oh, and I also need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am equal to men.

This was part of the message I was ingesting from feminist leaders at the time, and it felt OK because I was nowhere near ready to “settle down.” There was another part to the message, though, that didn’t feel right: Women shouldn’t value motherhood as our mothers and grandmothers had. Bearing children “reduces women to their wombs.” Motherhood, we were told, was “unfeminist.”

Compared with the intersectional mess that feminism has now become, this theoretical gobbledygook — which was not even remotely part of original feminism — almost seems quaint. The problem is, it affected a generation of women. Women who put off child-rearing until it was too late; women who had children, but then spent too much time away from them; women who would preach to other women that motherhood “destroys one’s identity.”

Perhaps because I, too, waited until it was almost too late, perhaps because I had a wonderful career before I had my son, I think I am able to look at all of this with some objectivity. And I would like to send to women in their 20s today a very different message: Motherhood — in all of its beauty, glory, wonder and exhaustion — will compare with nothing else you will ever do in your life. But it is not for every woman. It doesn’t make a woman a woman, but precisely because it is a role, a responsibility that is so profound, only each woman can know if it is right for her.

What is unfeminist? The devaluation of motherhood and, as a result, children. One of the saddest sights I see every year in New York City: A beautiful day at the park, strollers are lined up one after the other — with kids old enough to walk unhappily strapped in. A bevy of nannies sit and chat, seemingly unbothered by the miserable state of their charges.

Motherhood — in all of its beauty, glory, wonder and exhaustion — will compare with nothing else you will ever do in your life.

There are, of course, wonderful nannies who love the children they care for as their own. But let’s be honest here: They typically work for women who don’t “privilege” their careers over their kids.

It’s true: motherhood, especially in the early years, wears you out in ways you never thought possible. (I remember evenings of binge watching “The Good Wife,” not because I loved it but because I literally didn’t have the energy to find a better show.) But if you make it central to your identity, you will experience levels of joy and fulfillment that no job or no career can possibly touch.

And the effects of good mothering on children are profound. Can a father make up for a deficit of good mothering? Sometimes. I have met extraordinary fathers. But, in general, mothers and fathers bring different, often overlapping skills to the parenting table.

When I see a great mother, I don’t care what career she had before or will have after her kids are grown. (Motherhood is a lifetime role, but the in-house years are roughly 10 to 15.) When I see a great mother, I am in awe of her ability to tap into layers of patience, compassion and empathy that other women just shout about. I am in awe of the magnitude of her emotional capacity, an emotional intelligence that can understand the 1,500 different types of crying.
Yes, we can all laugh at overprotective Jewish mothers. But perhaps it’s not a coincidence that there’s a surfeit of Yiddish proverbs on the subject: “Mothers understand what their children cannot say.” “One mother achieves more than a hundred teachers.” “God could not be everywhere so he created mothers.”

I remain in awe of my own mother, who provided me with an ability to see every moment of motherhood — the good, the boring, the sleep deprived — as precious, as a gift from God. And although she was able to experience only the first two years of my son’s life, I believe I am honoring her memory by trying, each day, to reach for the highest ground that she herself provided.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author, cultural critic and mother living in New York City.

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Pity Mahmoud Abbas

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during his meeting with Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela May 7, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Only a confirmed hater of Palestinians — and a confirmed anti-Semite — could believe that they have the leadership they deserve.

Permit me to explain.

Last week, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas blamed the Jewish behavior of usury and money lending for causing the Holocaust. This isn’t the first time that Abbas has engaged in bizarre theories of history. Year ago, his doctoral dissertation, written while he was a student at Patrice Lumumba University in Russia, was on the “secret” relationship between Nazism and Zionism. Six million was exaggerated. He was a soft-core Holocaust denier.

Only this year, he reiterated that often repeated myth that the Jews have no attachment to the Temple Mount, none to Jerusalem or to the land of Israel, the Bible — archaeological evidence and religious practice of 2,500 years notwithstanding.

Now an elderly, sick man of 82, Abbas has been president of the Palestinian National Authority — to some, the State of Palestine — for 13 years and will go to his grave with no accomplishments to his name as the leader of his people. Divided between Gaza and the West Bank, they are ever more distant from statehood.

His achievements: He has become the No. 1 ally of Israel’s right-wing intent on having a one state solution, a Jewish state.

And he has become the No. 1 enemy of those of us who support a two-state solution because he has little credibility and alienated all but the most extreme for support for Palestinian statehood. Any possibility of a two-state solution will have to await not only a change in Israel’s current attitude but, more significantly, a change in Palestinian leadership.
He twice has rejected reasonable offers from former Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, walking away, as did the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before him, without even countering an offer of his own, afraid that he might be assassinated or go down in history as having betrayed his people’s most maximalist goals.

One must view Mahmoud Abbas as a pathetic figure and pity his people who hold onto him because they can’t imagine another way.

He even has alienated support within the Arab world, which no longer sees the Israel-Palestinian conflict as the central issue of the Middle East. Many Arab leaders view the Sunni-Shite conflict as more fundamental, and Israel as an indispensable force against Iran dominance.

I am beyond anger. Anger is based on expectations and disappointment when those expectation are not met, but I have no expectations from Abbas. Time has passed him by, his place in history is now secure. He has achieved nothing. Challenge yourself to name one positive accomplishment by him.

So one must view Abbas as a pathetic figure and pity his people who hold onto him because they can’t imagine another way.

Still, I cannot rejoice in the magnitude of his defeat because unlike the Israeli right and their American-Jewish supporters, I think that Israel desperately needs a two-state solution because it cannot sustain a Jewish state and a democratic state while still retaining control over so sizable a population that has no desire to be ruled by Israel. Day in and day out, we witness the cost of occupation not only to the Palestinian people but to Israeli democracy.
Nothing can happen until Abbas is no longer in power; the only way for something to happen is for the Palestinians to reverse the pressure on Israel by presenting a credible possibility of co-existence.

And again, the hypocrisy of some global institutions is glaring. When Abbas touched the sacred cow of the Holocaust, he was forced to retreat. He offered an apology: “Sorry to offend,” “didn’t mean to attack Judaism as a religion.” Yet when he denies Jewish ties to the land of Israel and to Jerusalem, its capital under David and Solomon and the locus of Jewish prayers since 70 C.E., many are silent and UNESCO and others endorse his fantasies. And then they wonder why Israel turns rightward and inward, scorning those institutions that should be pressing Palestinian leadership not to follow the path to perdition.

Michael Berenbaum is director of the Sigi Ziering Institute and a professor of Jewish Studies at American Jewish University.

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By Nixing Iran Nuclear Deal, Trump Opens a New Chapter in Volatile Mideast

FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Bushehr main nuclear reactor, 1,200 km (746 miles) south of Tehran, August 21, 2010. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi/File photo

With European powers either unable, or unwilling, to meet his demand to “fix” the Iran nuclear deal, President Donald Trump on May 8 followed through on his threat to “nix” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as it is formally known, and re-impose “the highest level of” economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction — that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program,” Trump asserted. “We will not allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America’ to gain access to the most deadly weapons on Earth.”

The president in January warned that he would scrap the accord unless its “disastrous flaws” were addressed, and, to this end, had for months been lobbying France, Great Britain and Germany to formulate a side agreement to eliminate the JCPOA’s so-called “sunset clauses” — which remove limitations on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium in just over a decade — as well as curb the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program and involvement in fomenting unrest in the Middle East.

The question now is: What comes next? While Tehran threatened to take measures “stronger than [Trump] imagines” now that the United States has backed away from the deal — including “vigorously” jump-starting its uranium enrichment program — the Iranian regime is believed to have contingency plans for the continuation of the accord without American participation. In fact, Iranian President Hasan Rouhani  kept this door open, saying on May 7 that “what [Tehran wants] for the deal is that it’s preserved and guaranteed by the non-Americans.”

While Trump vowed to continue working with allies to find a “real, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Iranian nuclear threat,” most analysts agree that it is exceedingly unlikely that Tehran will abide by any such process. In fact, Iran’s foreign ministry issued a statement describing the White House’s move as “illegal and illegitimate.”

By contrast, initial contacts by The Media Line with opposition sources in Tehran suggest that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s critics were energized by Trump’s words, which included a direct address to the “long-suffering people of Iran … [with whom] America stands.”

The president in January warned that he would scrap the accord unless its “disastrous flaws” were addressed.

For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on national television just moments after Trump’s speech in order to reaffirm his support for the “brave decision.” This, while no doubt cognizant of the fact that Washington’s move raises the heat on Iran, whose rulers may conclude that they have little to lose by unleashing their proxies on Israel.

Efraim Kam, a former colonel in the research division of Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence and currently a senior fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, said that “it is more likely than unlikely that the Iranians will respond,” although he does “not think there will be a major war, but instead a [tit-for-tat] exchange.”

Indeed, the Israeli army is on high alert in the north, where municipalities were ordered on the day of Trump’s announcement to unlock public bomb shelters over what the military called “unusual Iranian forces” in Syria. The Iranian mullahs may even determine that opening a front against Israel is in their best interest, using the conflagration as justification to restart their atomic program, if not make a full-out dash for a nuclear bomb.

Uzi Rubin, the former head of Israel’s Arrow defense program, developed jointly with the U.S. to neutralize the threat posed by longer-range ballistic missiles, concurs that “there is a very high potential for an intensification. Iran has spoken of a reprisal [against Israel] but the question is how it will be expressed. The Iranians are good chess players and will do something that will give them the maximum benefit with minimum damage.”

By ditching the JCPOA, then, Trump effectively opened Pandora’s box in the Middle East tinderbox. Many world leaders have warned that such action could lead to a large-scale military confrontation, not only involving the Jewish state and Sunni Arab countries, but also potentially the United States and Russia, which has re-emerged as a force in the region.
In the past, historians have described such conflicts — those involving multiple players and pitting global powers against one another — as world wars.

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Israel with a Side of Goosebumps

Imagine that you are living 400 years after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., and your parents are trying to convince you that the Jewish people must never stop praying to return home to Zion; that we should never lose hope.

I don’t know about you, but I might say something like this: “Hey Mom/Dad, no disrespect, but it’s been four centuries! Can’t we get a hint? This ain’t happening.”

Now, you can replicate that scene 400 years later, and 400 years after that. Indeed, for 1,878 years, one Jewish generation after another had to believe beyond all hope that the Jewish people would one day return to the land of their biblical ancestors. That eternal yearning was grafted into the very prayers and texts that sustained these generations through their nomadic journeys, which often included pogroms and persecution.

Fast forward to our own generation. My grandfather, who had a thriving business selling teas in Casablanca, was a religious man who was well aware of the Jewish yearning to return to the Holy Land. When his large family moved to Israel in the early 1950s, they went through severe hardships. Still, he kissed the ground and said, “I’m never leaving.” Israel for him meant coming home.

If we look at our disappointments in isolation — whether from the right or the left — we won’t feel the soul of Israel.

In our hip and cynical world, there’s little room for this kind of sentimentality. We much prefer hard-nosed analyses, hard-nosed criticism or hard-nosed talking points to promote one side or another. We’re not inclined to incorporate what I call the “goosebumps” of the Israel story.
A more sophisticated term for what I’m talking about is “context.” As Herb Keinon wrote recently in The Jerusalem Post, “Everything needs context. Nothing can be judged fairly if it is seen standing alone, isolated, disconnected from the past, from its surroundings. Nothing. Not a person, definitely not a state.”

Yearning to return home for 19 centuries is emotional context, and it’s easy to overlook. As Keinon writes, “We get so caught up in the daily news — the terrorism, the wars, the corruption — that we lose sight of the bigger picture.”

Keinon concedes that “Sovereignty, independence, running a country, developing an economy, fielding an army and fighting war after war is a messy business” and that “perhaps we haven’t lived up to our own lofty expectations.”

But if we look at our disappointments in isolation — whether from the right or the left — we won’t feel the soul of Israel.

I felt that soul a few weeks ago when I walked out of my Tel Aviv hotel on the morning of Yom HaZikaron. Beachgoers, taxis, pedestrians, security guards and merchants were busy making the urban noises of a bustling and vibrant town. Then, at exactly 11 a.m., a long siren sounded. Everyone froze. Drivers got out of their cars. People stood at attention. For two long minutes, Israelis throughout the country froze in place to honor the more than 25,000 souls who have sacrificed their lives to build and protect the state.

As I reflected on that scene, which overflowed with emotion, I couldn’t help thinking of Jewish activists in the United States who constantly demonstrate against Israel, usually in reaction to how Israel deals with the Palestinians.

These demonstrations have failed to influence Israeli policies. They are utterly devoid of context. They’re disconnected from the past (such as Israeli peace offers that were rejected) or the present (the desire of groups such as Hamas to invade and destroy Israel). In isolation, these protests look more like PR stunts to make protestors feel good about themselves.

Yearning to return home for 19 centuries is emotional context, and it’s easy to overlook. As Herb Keinon writes, “We get so caught up in the daily news — the terrorism, the wars, the corruption — that we lose sight of the bigger picture.”

But they’re missing more than political context; they’re also missing the emotional context of what it means to come home after 1,900 years. When you feel that emotion, the criticism can’t help but be more loving, more measured.

The idea that Jews of more than 100 nationalities can gather in their ancient homeland and create a thriving sovereign state — with all of the blunders and flaws that come with creating any sovereign state — is a miracle that Israel’s critics should keep in mind when they criticize. Not as an afterthought that precedes a “but,” but as a deeply ingrained thought that permeates any fair and nuanced view of the Israel story.

Criticism of Israel goes much farther when it comes from a loving place. When it devolves into bitterness and anger, it’s got nowhere to go but to a choir of like-minded critics. It’s got no chance to open minds, let alone change them.

For too long, critics of Israel in the Jewish community have hidden behind the cliché of “tough love.” But tough love that hides the love is only tough.

We don’t have to tell our kids anymore to keep praying for the return of Jewish sovereignty. We made it. The 1,900-year dream has come true. When you feel those goosebumps, it’s a lot easier to criticize with love, and to make others feel that love.

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Letters to the Editor: Natalie Portman, Teen Mental Health, and Millennials and the Holocaust

Natalie Portman’s Israel Decision

Is Natalie Portman wrong about not visiting Israel to pick up the Genesis Prize? Right? Justified? Anti-Israel? Playing into the hands of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions group? Influential people are lining up on both sides. But strategically, it’s the wrong conversation. There is a bigger, more critical and worrisome story beneath the surface of the Portman controversy that supporters of Israel and believers in Zionism have to wrap their heads around.

Powerful people like her, the people they influence and too many of the next generation are distancing themselves from the current Israeli establishment. We can vociferously argue the drawbacks and merits of everyone’s beliefs, but the fact is we are in danger of losing these people. And we cannot lose them. The ramifications are too great.

If Israel were a product and we were the marketers who saw a growing trend among important segments of the market, that consumers no longer were buying as they once did, we would be doing everything we could to understand why and what needed to be done to shore up our marketplace.

Instead, we just argue, write, voice outrage, support and offer many opinions. All the while, as the marketplace continues to hemorrhage.

Is our job as Israel-lovers to just to keep talking, writing and having conversation? Or is it to understand our marketplace and take action?

Gary Wexler via email

Portman’s refusal to accept her Genesis Prize in Israel makes me very sad. I used to adore her, and now I can’t watch her. Leftist conflict with Israel isn’t new, but do liberals really think they can just turn their backs on Israel and remain Jews, and that their children and grandchildren will still be Jewish? When the Babylonian exiles returned to Jerusalem, those who stayed behind, the first Diaspora, showed great deference and support in rebuilding the Jewish state despite serious controversy. And ever since, Diaspora Jews have cherished the Holy Land.

The miracle of Jewish survival has occurred in part because we don’t just believe in God, we have a deal with God, a covenant, based on our allegiance to the Promised Land. This connection has inspired Jewish hopes and pride, and kept our people together for 4,000 years. Now, as Jews by the thousands make aliyah to escape persecution, and Iran threatens Israel with a three-front war, “progressives” here and in Europe relentlessly slander Israel.

Rueben Gordon via email

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Teen Mental Health Help in L.A.

Regarding your story “Making Teen Mental Health a Priority,” (April 27) help for teens with mental health issues is in our own backyard.

Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services (DHMSH) transforms lives by providing quality mental health care and substance abuse treatment from 11 sites and in nearly 100 schools. The agency helps almost 100,000 adults and children throughout Southern California each year. Its suicide prevention center — the first in the nation to provide 24/7 crisis counseling — receives more than 80,000 calls on its crisis line annually and provides support groups for people who have lost loved ones to suicide or have attempted it.

My late mother-in-law, Beatrice Stern, closest of friends with Didi Hirsch and a former DHMSH board member, took a leading role in sparking positive conversations about mental illness by establishing the DHMSH Erasing the Stigma Leadership Awards. What began as a small fundraising luncheon has grown into a large dinner, which last week honored musician Rick Springfield, actor Oliver Platt, pro football player Joe Barksdale and the Born This Way Foundation for their work toward erasing the stigma of mental illness.

Marilyn Stern, Westwood

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Liberal Democrats, by Definition

I come from a long line liberal Jewish Democrats. When I married my husband, (who is Jewish), I married out of the “faith” because he is a Republican. I read to him Karen Lehrman Bloch’s column “I Am a Liberal. Are You? (April 20) to verify his stance on each point she highlighted. He agreed with every line. Turns out Republicans can be liberals, too.

Jan Burns via email

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Emotional Links to Israel

Thank you, David Suissa, for reminding me of why I swell with pride when hearing of Israel’s great accomplishments, and why my heart aches when I hear of Israel’s sorrows (“A ‘Better’ Word for Israel,” April 20). Having been born and raised in the United States, and having lived my entire life here, I needed that reminder of why. What an eloquent column that shines the light on two big words: fair and unfair.

Pamela Galanti, Chatsworth

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Cartoonist Is Off Base

In light of President Donald Trump’s success at staring down nuclear missiles from North Korea, producing amazingly low unemployment numbers (especially among the poor and most vulnerable), the growth of the stock market and Gross National Product, decimating ISIS, moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem, raising workers’ pay and bonuses through tax cuts, and confirming federal judges, the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” cartoon by Steve Greenberg in your April 27 issue was particularly disgusting.

Warren Scheinin via email

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The Amazing Metuka Benjamin
Metuka Benjamin could have achieved super success as a leader in politics, business or any leadership role she could have chosen (“Milken Schools President Is Moving On,” April 27). Consumed by her intense love of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, in particular, she applied her skills, talents and magnetic personality to the building of Jewish schools and the relationship with the State of Israel, not just in words and emotions, but with action. She envisioned and built one of the largest Jewish schools in the U.S., complete with a “living bridge” to Israel as a laboratory of Jewish and Zionist identity for Los Angeles students.
For people serious about the relationship between Israel and our 18- to 26-year-olds, Benjamin is just beginning, again. You may want to follow her next move. Stay tuned.

Howard Gelberd via email

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Millennials and the Holocaust

The recent Claims Conference study that revealed millennials’ lack of knowledge about the Holocaust is, as Stephen Smith pointed out, due to “an uneven educational environment” (“Mandate to End Holocaust Ignorance,” April 20). The question is: What to do about it? While eight states have Holocaust Study “mandates” that vary in nature — and approximately half of the states have Holocaust teaching “recommendations” — should all states, via federal legislation, particularly, require Holocaust instruction?

One facet of the foregoing is the all-too-often failure to provide financing for Holocaust curriculum implementation. Without dollars for teacher in-servicing, materials and associated educational costs, just how “even” can Holocaust instruction become?

California is a perfect example of an unfunded, via taxes (1986 forward), but funded, via contributions (post 2002, for several years) mandate. Fortunately, for millions of California students, organizations such as Stephen Smith’s USC Shoah Foundation provide rich, ongoing, accessible Holocaust study resources. Still, a national “mandate” without means (i.e., teacher training and related funding costs) should make us cautious about what we wish for.

Bill Younglove, Lakewood

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The Middle East Powder Keg
Iran having a base of military operations in Syria must never be allowed (“Collision Course,” April 27). This not only puts Israel at risk, but world peace, as well.

Add Russia’s involvement in the area and you have a recipe for a catastrophe.

George Vreeland Hill via email

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Should American Jews Criticize Israel?

Photo from Pixabay.

Whenever I go on a tear about how much I love Israel, my Israeli best friend rolls his eyes and says, “You should live here.”

While he appreciates my enthusiasm for the Jewish homeland, he’s convinced my zealotry would be moderated if I had to daily endure a range of challenging Israeli realities, from long lines to crazy drivers to the Palestinian conflict. But what he’s really saying is this: Because I do not live in Israel, my opinion of her isn’t wholly legitimate.

He’s entitled to his opinion.

Personally, I’ve always preferred the Leon Wieseltier view that “the merit of a view owes nothing to the biography of the individual who holds it” — meaning, a person is entitled to an opinion about anything he or she cares enough to consider despite the credentials of his or her resume. But to clarify, I asked my friend how he feels about my pronouncements on Israel.

“Are you saying my opinion is illegitimate or incomplete?” I asked.

“Both,” he said. “You are not serving in the army; you are not contributing like the Israelis are contributing. You are not dealing with the daily struggles, the politics, Hamas, Lebanon. We live in this country and you are on the other side of the globe.

“I’m Israeli,” he continued. “You’re just Jewish.”

Ouch. And that’s for expressing my love of Israel.

“I’m Israeli,” my friend said. “You’re just Jewish.”

But this is also the conventional wisdom that has held for American Jews when it comes to criticizing Israel. We’re told there is a price we Diaspora Jews must pay for not living in the land, and that price is to exercise some humility and restraint in our public criticism of Israel. It is preferred, by some, that we not engage in it at all. Doesn’t Israel have enough enemies?

I thought about this a great deal last week in the aftermath of Natalie Portman’s dramatic snub of the Genesis Prize. In rejecting the award, Portman shared her (negative) opinion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and condemned some of his policies. Does that make her an enemy of Israel or the Jewish people?

“Self-criticism is the hallmark of a mature community,” Wieseltier has taught.

In fact, the Bible clearly instructs us not to hate our neighbor, but instead, rebuke him when he does wrong (Leviticus 19:17).

It is therefore a fatal mistake to assume criticism makes an enemy of the critic. On the contrary, the art of criticism is to encourage improvement, to help the subject refine its sense of itself and to set the stage for an eternal striving — whether for one’s country or one’s character.

“We should be cultivating a kind of criticism that comes from love,” Tal Becker, senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute said during a panel discussion at UCLA Hillel last week. Becker explained why he doesn’t take personal offense when American Jews criticize Israel.

“American Jews who are criticizing are not telling you what to do, they’re telling you what they think,” he said. “Take a chill pill. Someone’s just telling you what they think.”

Still, no one likes to be on the receiving end of criticism. Even when it’s “constructive” it is almost always unpleasant to hear how you’ve fallen short or what you’ve done wrong. Moral criticism may be the hardest to bear, let alone accept. But it is nonetheless essential to the functioning of a healthy society, not least because it encourages the free exchange of ideas and promotes creative discourse. New ideas are rarely born of party-line agreements.

Consider the Talmud, a document of disputation. Why does its vitality stem from critique?Because stone sharpens stone, the rabbis say.

So many views are partial views and require other views in the attainment of truth. “Make for yourself a heart of many rooms,” the Talmud tells us.

To incorporate criticism is to grow and become better. Even heretical ideas lend themselves to expanded understanding: Monotheism was a heresy when the Jews introduced it.

But as Becker said, the trick to criticism is to do it with love. It is infinitely easier to hear if it comes from a wish for improvement and not from anger and desire for destruction. Pauline Kael could critique movies because everyone knew she loved them — even “great trash” was appreciated.

True, many of us don’t live in the land. But still, we love it. And it is sometimes the deepest act of love and holy chutzpah to tell your love the truth.

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Should American Jews Criticize Israel? : https://ift.tt/2rdUXAE