I met A. B. Yehoshua in the summer of 1991. In a lecture about classical Zionist ideas, he added his own rhetorical flavor. Jews of the Diaspora have a Jewish skin, he said, but only by living in Israel can one become Jewish to the core.
I asked him what “Jewish skin” meant. He replied that in the Diaspora, Jews can hide by simply taking off their outward Jewishness and assimilating, but in Israel, where Hebrew is spoken and Jewish holidays are national holidays, a Jew lives Jewishly to the core.
My retort was that Jewishness is not defined by any singular set of observances, and that grafting Jewish holidays onto the public calendar is the real “Jewish skin.” The Jewish core is understanding the meaning of sacred rituals to live by the principles they inculcate.
He did not agree. It was the first time in my life that I realized that even Israelis of enormous stature rely on myth and stereotype instead of intimately knowing what they are talking about.
Amichai Chikli is Israel’s new Minister of Diaspora Affairs. He spoke recently to the Israeli American Council where he offered this advice to American Jews about understanding the new Israeli government: “I think one tip is less Haaretz and New York Times.” While he chose liberal news outlets for typical media-bashing instead of making a genuine argument, if we listen to him in his own words before passing judgment, it is no more comforting.
In a 2021 interview (Caroline Glick’s Mideast News Hour, Dec. 22, 2021) about why he refused as a member of Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party to participate in Israel’s governing coalition, he explained that he warned Bennett not to abandon long-standing, right-wing aspirations to gain power in the near term, using a story from the Talmud (Eruvin 53b).
In the story, Rabbi Joshua ben Hananyah asks for directions from a young boy. The boy says, “this path is short and long and this one is long and short.”
The rabbi chooses the short and long path and finds himself blocked by orchards and gardens.
He returns to the boy and asks, “Didn’t you say that this way was short?” The boy answers, “Didn’t I also tell you it was long?”
To Chikli, the story is about patience, but the context of the story teaches something else as well.
The story follows a Mishnah debating whether a certain homonym should be read with the letter ayin or aleph followed by examples of the importance of precise speech. Since Chikli chose this passage to convey his meaning, we should pay close attention to his words.
Following his appointment, Chikli told the Jerusalem Post (Dec. 28, 2022), “It is heartbreaking to see Jewish young people who concede their connections to their people and their heritage in order to connect to the latest fashionable movement that they are calling woke.”
That a devoutly right-wing politician castigated wokeness as the bogeyman threatening the Jewish State is not surprising, but he also said this about Reform Judaism:
“In Israel, Reform and Conservative are seen as the same, but the Reform in Israel took the wrong direction. The Reform has identified itself with the radical left’s false accusations that the settlers are violent, so they have earned the criticism against them, and I cannot identify with them. They are going back to their roots in Germany of anti-Zionism and anti-nationalism. It’s a tragedy that they are going there. They are anti-nationalist, and it’s important for them to wake up.”
To condemn wokeness while exhorting Reform Jews to wake up is quite a precise turn of phrase. It reminded me of my encounter with A.B. Yehoshua as another Israeli of stature condemned my Jewishness and I again realized he has no idea what he is talking about.
The common clay of right-wing political movements is the need to build straw men into enemies to justify their excesses. In his 2021 interview, Chikli cites the centrality of the thought of Gadi Taub to his understanding of who these enemies are.
Taub divides the world between nationalists and globalists, with the latter being a threat to democracy because they supposedly elevate universalism and internationalism over the national will of the people. Reform Judaism, which understands Jewish values as a unique manifestation of universal principles, provides a convenient foe for the right-wing.
Moreover, Reform Judaism’s subversive embrace of the Biblical principle that all human beings are created in the Divine image to accept people as equal regardless of race, sex, gender or sexuality is a threat to any order dependent on traditional hierarchies and exclusion.
Thus, it is understandable why the right-wing chooses to denigrate Reform, but it remains shocking that the emissary of the Jewish State to the Jewish community in America would lend his voice to such nonsense.
Chikli castigated Bennett for taking the short path that was also long.
His embrace of myth and stereotype to manufacture enemies as justification for right-wing abuses of power suggests that he should have read more closely the story before the one he quoted, the story of the young girl.
The rabbi was walking along a path through a field when a young girl asked him, “Rabbi, isn’t this a field?” Meaning, walking here is a forbidden destruction of the property of others.
He answered, “No, this is a well-worn path,” meaning that a path customarily used is an exception to the previous rule. The young girl responded, “Robbers like you made the path.”
Thus, she reminded him that justifying wrongdoing by saying that others have gone this way before only makes evil more commonplace, not less wrong.
The Jewish way is not to follow paths built from the common clay. Instead, our way is to seek righteousness, peace and justice . . . for all, even if, as the young boy then points out, it is the longer path.
Israel’s new government would be well-advised to remember that as it chooses who it manufactures as its enemies.
Maybe that’s just my Jewish skin talking, but it feels much deeper.
Copyright © 2023 by the Intermountain Jewish News
