Haaretz Magazine di venerdì 12 maggio 2006 ha pubblicato un articolo di A. B. Yehoshua che rielaborava un discorso dello scrittore sul rapporto tra identità ebraica , Stato di Israele e giudaismo, tenuto in occasione del centenario dell'American Jewish Comitee suscitando un vivace dibattito. Lo riportiamo di seguito, seguito dalla replica di Yair Carpi, pubblicata dal giornale israeliano venerdì 19. Entrambi i testi sono in inglese.

People without a land
By A.B. Yehoshua

Just before I entered the hall for the symposium in Washington that inaugurated two days of discussions on the future of the Jewish People in light of the century that has passed since the founding of the host organization (the American Jewish Committee), my youngest son phoned from Israel and told me about how moved he was by the memorial ceremony, in which he and his wife and toddler daughter had just taken part, for the fallen of Israel's wars. I made a brief comment to the panel's moderator about the fact that the symposium was taking place on the eve of Yom Hazikaron, Israel's Memorial Day, and I hoped that, amid the many congratulatory speeches at the start of the evening, this would be noted and that we might also all be asked to honor the Israeli Memorial Day, as customary, with a minute of silence. But this didn't happen. And Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day, due to be marked the following day, received only faint and brief mention from the speakers. I do not cite this as a grievance, but rather as a symptomatic example that may also explain my gloomy state of mind at that symposium, given that the deep and natural identification that a large portion of American Jewry once felt with Israeli life has been steadily and seriously weakening in recent years. All of the participants in the subsequent discussions agreed that, for some years now, a slow process of disengagement of American Jewry from Israel has been intensifying. The reasons are numerous and complex, and relate both to the fact that the "Israeli drama" has lost many of its attractive features for American Jews, and to the accelerated processes of assimilation occurring to varying degrees within America itself. Missed opportunity Even though the title of the symposium was "The Future of the Past: What Will Become of the Jewish People?" I may have been the only one to begin by talking about the failure of most of the Jewish People to foresee in the 20th century the depth and vehemence of the hostility toward it, which eventually led to an annihilation unprecedented in human history. "The Jewish texts," which many Jews today consider to be the core of their identity, did not help us to understand better the processes of the reality around us. The Jews were too busy with mythology and theology instead of history, and therefore the straightforward warnings voiced by Jabotinsky and his colleagues in the early 20th century - "Eliminate the Diaspora, or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you" - fell on deaf ears. After Palestine was taken over by the British, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised a national home for the Jews, and if during the 1920s, when the country's gates were open wide, just a half-million Jews had come (less than 5 percent of the Jewish People at that time) instead of the tiny number that actually did come, it certainly would have been possible to establish a Jewish state before the Holocaust on part of the Land of Israel. This state not only would have ended the Israeli-Arab conflict at an earlier stage and with less bloodshed - it also could have provided refuge in the 1930s to hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jews who sensed the gathering storm, and thus would have significantly reduced the number of victims in the Holocaust. The Zionist solution, which was proven as the best solution to the Jewish problem before the Holocaust, was tragically missed by the Jewish People. And if it weren't for those few (less then half of 1 percent of the Jewish People) people who, a hundred years ago, believed and actually sought the fulfillment of the need for the sovereign normalization of the Jewish People in its ancient homeland, the Jewish People could have found itself after the horrors of World War II just wandering among Holocaust museums, without even that piece of sovereign homeland that still offers some solace for the disaster that occurred. But such a tough and piercing reckoning, coming from such an old-fashioned Zionist premise about our painful and tragic missed opportunity in the past century, is not welcome at the festive opening of a convention of a Jewish organization that, like many other Jewish organizations at the start of the 20th century, shunned, if not actively opposed, the Zionist solution. Better to talk about all the Nobel Prizes and prestige garnered by Jews in the past century, about the intellectual achievements of Freud and Einstein, and about the tremendous contribution that Jews have made to Western culture. Therefore, right from the start, I felt like I was spoiling the nice, pleasant atmosphere with my anger. And instead of joining in the celebration of the wonderful spirituality of the Jewish identity, and of the cultural renaissance in America, and instead of extolling the texts that we must learn and the Jewish values that we must inculcate, I tried nevertheless to outline at least a fundamental boundary between Jewish identity in Israel and Jewish identity in the Diaspora. This is no easy task nowadays. Many Israelis would disagree with me as well. The basic concepts of Zionism have either been pulverized beyond recognition within the normality of sovereign life, or usurped in a distorted and grotesque way by fascist rightist ideologies or radical post-modernism. And this is where the conflict between myself and my listeners arose. (Not with all of my listeners, actually. Some, mainly Jews who had some Israeli experience, came up to me after the discussion was over to express deep solidarity with what I'd said.) I did not talk about "the negation of the Diaspora." The Jewish Diaspora has existed ever since the Babylonian exile, about 2,500 years ago, and it will continue to exist for thousands more years. The Diaspora is the most solid fact in Jewish history; we know its cost, and we are aware of its accomplishments and failures in terms of Jewish continuity. In fact, the most harshly worded statements concerning its theological negation are to be found scattered in the "core" religious texts; there is no need for an Israeli writer to come to Washington to talk about the negation of the Diaspora. All of the reports suggesting that I said that there can be no Jewishness except in Israel are utterly preposterous. No one would ever think of saying such an absurd thing. It is Israel and not the Diaspora that could be a passing episode in Jewish history, and this is the source of my compulsion to reiterate the old and plain truths that apparently need to be repeated again and again. Not just to Diaspora Jews, but to Israelis, too. Jewish identity in Israel, which we call Israeli identity (as distinct from Israeli citizenship, which is shared by Arab citizens who also live in the shared homeland, though their national identity is Palestinian) - this Jewish-Israeli identity has to contend with all the elements of life via the binding and sovereign framework of a territorially defined state. And therefore the extent of its reach into life is immeasurably fuller and broader and more meaningful than the Jewishness of an American Jew, whose important and meaningful life decisions are made within the framework of his American nationality or citizenship. His Jewishness is voluntary and deliberate, and he may calibrate its pitch in accordance with his needs. We in Israel live in a binding and inescapable relationship with one another, just as all members of a sovereign nation live together, for better or worse, in a binding relationship. We are governed by Jews. We pay taxes to Jews, are judged in Jewish courts, are called up to serve in the Jewish army and compelled by Jews to defend settlements we didn't want or, alternatively, are forcibly expelled from settlements by Jews. Our economy is determined by Jews. Our social conditions are determined by Jews. And all the political, economic, cultural and social decisions craft and shape our identity, which although it contains some primary elements, is always in a dynamic process of changes and corrections. While this entails pain and frustration, there is also the pleasure of the freedom of being in your own home. Homeland and national language and a binding framework are fundamental components of any person's national identity. Thus, I cannot point to a single Israeli who is assimilated, just as there is no Frenchman in France who is an assimilated Frenchman - even if he has never heard of Moliere and has never been to the Louvre, and prefers soccer matches and horse races. Identity as a garment What I sought to explain to my American hosts, in overly blunt and harsh language perhaps, is that, for me, Jewish values are not located in a fancy spice box that is only opened to release its pleasing fragrance on Shabbat and holidays, but in the daily reality of dozens of problems through which Jewish values are shaped and defined, for better or worse. A religious Israeli Jew also deals with a depth and breadth of life issues that is incomparably larger and more substantial than those with which his religious counterpart in New York or Antwerp must contend. Am I denouncing their incomplete identity? I am neither denouncing nor praising. It's just a fact that requires no legitimating from me, just as my identity requires no legitimating from them. But since we see ourselves as belonging to one people, and since the two identities are interconnected, and flow into one another, the relation between them must be well clarified. As long as it is clear to all of us that Israeli Jewish identity deals, for better or worse, with the full spectrum of the reality and that Diaspora Jewry deals only with parts of it, then at least the difference between whole and part is acknowledged. But the moment that Jews insist that involvement in the study and interpretation of texts, or in the organized activity of Jewish institutions, are equal to the totality of the social and political and economic reality that we in Israel are contending with - not only does the moral significance of the historic Jewish grappling with a total reality lose its validity, there is also the easy and convenient option of a constant flow from the whole to the partial. Not by chance do more than half a million Israelis now live outside of Israel. If Jewish identity can feed itself on the study of texts and the mining of memories, and some occasional communal involvement - and as long as all those capable Chabad emissaries are supplying instant Jewish and religious services everywhere on the planet - what's the problem, in the global age, with taking the Israeli kids and exiling the whole family to some foreign high-tech mecca? After all, the core of the identity is eternal and accessible anywhere. This is how Israeliness in the homeland will also become a garment that is removed and replaced with another garment in times of trouble, just as Romanian-ness and Polishness were replaced by Englishness and American-ness, and Tunisian-ness and Moroccan-ness were replaced by Frenchness and Canadian-ness. And in the future, in another century or two, when China is the leading superpower, why shouldn't some Jews exchange their American-ness or Canadian-ness for Chinese-ness or Singaporean-ness? Just think about it: Who would have believed in the 16th century that within 200 or 300 years, the Jews would be concentrated in an unknown land called America? The Jews have proven their ability to live anywhere for thousands of years without losing their identity. And as long as the goyim don't cause too many problems, Jewish perseverance will not falter. If Israeliness is just a garment, and not a daily test of moral responsibility, for better or worse, of Jewish values, then it's no wonder that poverty is spreading, that the social gaps are widening and that cruelty toward an occupied people is perpetrated easily and without pangs of conscience. Since it will always be possible to escape from the reality to the old texts, and to interpret them in such a way that will imbue us with greatness, hope and consolation. The national minority among us of the Palestinian Israelis, who share Israeli citizenship with us, could also make a contribution to this identity, just as American Jews contribute to the general American identity, and the Basques to the Spanish identity and so on. The more Israeli we are, the better the partnership we have with them. The more we concentrate solely on Jewish spirituality and texts, believing this to be of chief importance, the more the alienation between us grows. The simple truth I keep bringing up the matter of texts, because in liberal Jewish circles this has recently become the most important anchor of identity, as evidenced by the return of manifestly secular people to the synagogue - not in order to find God, but to clutch onto identity. As someone who has spent his whole life dealing with texts - writing, reading and analyzing - I am incensed by the increasingly dangerous and irresponsible disconnection between the glorification of the texts and the mundane matters of daily life. Instead, I propose that we continue to nurture the concrete and living value of "the homeland," rather than the dull and worn-out value of Jewish spirituality. In all the Bible, the word moledet (homeland) is mentioned just 22 times, and many of these times in reference to other nations. The first sentence spoken to the first Jew is, "Go for yourself from your land, from your moledet, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you." And throughout their long history, the Jews obeyed the first part of this imperative with great devotion, moving from one moledet to another with surprising ease. And the terrible end to these wanderings needs no further mention. If we don't want this kind of Jewish mindset (with the help of our Palestinian rivals for the homeland) to pull the rug out from under our feet, we ought to reiterate the basic, old concepts to Israelis just as much as to American Jews who, though they were offended by me, treated me with exemplary courtesy, perhaps because deep down, they felt that I was speaking the simple truth. Translated from the Hebrew by Anne Pace

The judaism of survival no longer
works by Yair Caspi

There is truth in what A.B. Yehoshua told the centennial conference of the American Jewish Committee. Until the modern era, Judaism was never a "religion" like Christianity, which is responsible primarily for its adherents' spiritual life, but a doctrine of life, which seeks to guide all the acts of man and all the ways of the society. Life in a Jewish state in which, potentially, most of the decisions are "Jewish," is a far more "Jewish" life than in the Diaspora, where a very small part of a person's life is c onducted from within his Judaism. Surprisingly, this is not the position of modern Zionism but, as it happens, a traditional Jewish posture originating in the Bible, which asks of mankind, "In all your ways acknowledge him," and continues in the Mishna and in the Talmud, which require halakha (Jewish religious law) in all spheres of life. And there is also falsehood in what Yehoshua said. For a long time, the bulk of our life in Israel has not been conducted according to Judaism. We avoid that challenge in two ways: Secular people measure their lives mainly in terms of the world's cultural values (is it "democratic," are "individual rights" preserved, and so on); religious Jews confine their Jewish life to observing kashrut (the dietary laws), Shabbat and studying the Gemara. Yehoshua misleads his readers. What makes our deeds Jewish is not the fact that they are done by Jews in the State of Israel. Our deeds are Jewish because they stem from a basic Jewish vision about the proper conduct of mankind and society. This is the vision which the Zionist movement sought to revivify in the "exemplary society" it set out to establish in the Land of Israel. Before we can go to Diaspora Jewry and offer them Israeli Judaism as the perfect thing, there is much work to be done. To understand the precise core and the misleading element in Yehoshua's remarks, we need to go back very far and to survey the history of the idea of Israel's exemplary society as the formative element of the Jewish identity, which begins with the revelation of a purposeful creation and a singular role for the Hebrew nation, and is renewed, after a very long and inactive period, in the form of the Zionist movement. And is lost and again strives to arise again. The world's role A thousand times since his creation, man has looked at the world: at the land, at the sky, at the sea, at the trees, at the animals, at the people. A thousand times he saw land. Sky. Sea. Plants. Animals. People. But one morning everything changed. Suddenly all the individual items fused into a picture. Suddenly man saw a grand design. And in the design each detail fulfills a role that has been set. And the observer, filled with inspiration, sat and wrote: "In the beginning." "Let there be light." Suddenly everything spoke. Suddenly the voice was heard. Suddenly the person saw that every stone and tree and animal had a purpose. Suddenly it was revealed that every item in the world fulfills a mission. The discovery from Genesis, that the world has a purpose, changed man's understanding of himself. Henceforth he had a new question to guide him: What is my place in the design? What was I intended to do? The man who asked discovered an invitation to be his creator's partner in completing himself and the world. The special invitation he received fired man with enthusiasm, but also with resistance. He liked being the creator's assistant, but did not like being told what to do. Therefore, after he scored several achievements, he started to wonder: Maybe I have reached the level at which I can decide about my future by myself? The rest is known and it repeats itself in almost every generation: The God of truth is dismissed and replaced by a selection of false gods that exempt man from the long, hard road and can be interchanged according to need. The patriarch Abraham identified the pointlessness of worshiping the false gods and taught others how to listen anew to the voice that calls on man to fulfill his mission. Moses found that natural talent is a national avocation - being a pioneer of the next stage of human development. The Israelites undertook to specialize in exemplifying an exemplary society on earth. Moses and his successors laid foundations that evolved into rules of labor: Know what is above you. Do not be tempted into a belief that exempts you from your basic responsibility. Be aware of what you have received in your world and of the possibilities that your gifts open to you. Seek intentionality and proper action in all your ways. Make the perfection of man and society the cardinal mission of the nation and educate to that end. Build institutions for the development of the method. Take social responsibility for those who have received less than you, because the collective mission will not succeed if part of your nation feels that it does not belong. Discover what you were meant to do and accept limitations. Do not despair at unavoidable misses along the way, and practice repentance. Set dates for remembering the formative events on which important intentionality or a role were designated. Do not become addicted to your sacred work and set aside a day on which you only receive what already exists, a day without activity. The Jews liked being God's chosen people. But very quickly they tired of the demanding mission: to live a life of obligation. They began to wonder: Why did we, of all people, receive harder work than all the nations? Why is it that we, of all people, have to devote ourselves to sublime goals when around us everyone is out to have a good time? And how is it that the whole world is wrong? And who even knows that God exists? At the end of the Second Temple era the Jews found a compromise solution to the serious tension created between the responsibility of being the leaders in human development and the desire to be like everyone else: They decided to constrict themselves. To preserve all that had been revealed until that point. Not to add more. They left the land and put off to the distant future the day when they would return to their labors completely. Judaism shifted itself into a waiting mode. The Jewish role changed. It was no longer the vanguard of the human journey, but the "preserver of the precepts." Preserver of the great achievements of the patriarchs. Preserving them for the future day on which we will go back to fulfilling the mission in full. Preserving and waiting for a different person with a great wind at his back. Judaism went into exile - from full responsibility to independent life. From a role that it postponed for the future. From the Land of Israel. So that they would one day be able to unite and return and complete an unfinished labor, the Jews decided to freeze themselves in the present and to make an assumption regarding the last common denominator which all Jews agreed on before they were scattered to the four corners of the earth: of the Babylonian Talmud as the basis for religious law that is not to be changed. Light unto the nations While they were sleeping, the world changed; the discoveries of the Hebrew nation, which had at first been rejected, began to be accepted. The world adopted the Tanach, and its readers, from everywhere on earth, found in it an exciting personal invitation to come along on the journey to perfect man and society. Those who joined found themselves suddenly enlisted in a role that makes them partners in a new community: mankind. From the Jews the world received the future - the revelation that what is does not determine what will be, but on the contrary: Accepting the vision of the world as it should be changes the present. Every person received from the Jews an invitation to find himself a place which is no longer dictated according to his race, origin, class, appearance or money - but solely according to his good deeds. Idol worship, everyone suddenly agreed, was a mistake. From the Jews the world received one God. And from the Jews the world received a day of the week on which to remember that there is someone managing the world even when man does nothing. From the world the Jews received confirmation that they did indeed have a special role. In the middle of the 18th century, after about 2,000 years of delays, the Jews discovered that the exile was over. Judaism, which had been kept in deep freeze, no longer stood up to competition with the Enlightenment and the general culture. Having no choice, the Jews decided to go back to being a chosen people. "You chose us" and "light unto the nations" were translated, in the language of the Zionist movement, into the vision of an exemplary society that would be established in the Land of Israel and would serve as an example - for a singular convergence from all corners of the earth in order to complete an unfinished mission. For the healing of a sick nation that was living in the past and the future, and had no present. For the renewal of an ancient culture that knows how to connect the Israeli consciousness of mission with exemplary achievements from the world's cultures. For renewing a connection with nature and soil. For taking complete responsibility for the totality of a nation's life. For social legislation that sets new standards of mutual responsibility. For a life of truth, simplicity, integrity, readiness for sacrifice, fraternity. The vision of the Jewish-Israeli exemplary society that moved the return to Zion in its first decades was replaced by two different styles of idol worship: the worshipers of the new, who believe that God is in new technology, in the latest social norm, in state-of-the-art products, in parting with all the old values, in children with no limits, in man who will soon be God. And, in opposition to them, the worshipers of the old, who believe in a doctrine that even God is forbidden to change; who narrow their lives and exempt themselves from discovering the human role in all the possibilities that entered the world; who believe that redemption will come when the king from the House of David returns to us and all old land shall be returned, and a priest shall perform sacrifices on the mount; and who allow themselves to subjugate gentiles and exploit the secular, because they are already the chosen people. We need Israelis The Torah of Israel, which knows the secret of connecting yesterday and tomorrow, of the needs of the individual and responsibility for the public good, of religion and science, of nation and world, is today in very limited use. And we are again beset by the worldwide rift between religion and culture as an existential threat to the State of Israel. The Judaism of survival no longer works. And the Jewish people is disintegrating because it has lost its formative element: the consciousness of the mission which is assumed by all its members and which builds them as a people. No one knows who is a Jew, because there is no agreement on what a Jew is obligated to do. The Diaspora is not succeeding in constructing a system of rules which a majority of the Jews there want and are ready to commit to. We have lost the connecting element. Between Diaspora and Land of Israel, between Israel and its Judaism. Israel's young people, secular and religious, no longer believe anyone or believe in anything. For a human development program that revealed a mission for man and forged a model nation and changed the world and lost its way, Israelis are needed who will restore it to its place. We need Israelis who are ready to give up the illusion that someone somewhere is safeguarding for them a ready-to-use Judaism to which people can return when they take off time from their careers and from enjoying themselves. Individuals who know that there is no one from whom to learn Israel's role today, and who will take it upon themselves to relearn all the books of Judaism, without guidelines about what they are permitted or forbidden to discover. We need sinners who have decided to repent and have discovered that they have to bring back with them all of Judaism, so that they will have something to come back to. We need perceptive people who will expose anew the tools and the methods with which intentionality is deciphered in reality and a mission is found for man, who will discover the essence and the core, and will take it upon themselves to differentiate it from habitual postponement and survival. We need strong people who are ready to acknowledge their dependence, to record what they received and what they did not do alone, to be thankful for it and to start to rewrite the Book of Blessings. We are very much in need of people who know how to hear a shout. Who are available to listen to the requests of those who have lost their way and do not know what to do. We need pioneers who will write new prayers. We need men and women who are ready to prepare themselves for an old profession: world experts in the struggle against the new and covert ways of idol worship. We need pioneers who will build us a house of study to mend the world and man and nation. Who will articulate the "do" and "do not do" for our time. Who will write the missing tractates of the Talmud, on parenthood, relationships, career, technology, the State of Israel. Who will muster the courage to add to the Ten Commandments: Do not buy for no reason. And much more. We need people of faith who are certain that the whole world will join tomorrow but are ready today to work alone. We need people of patience who are ready to start, knowing that this journey of ours will take several generations. We need people of humility who do not know it all, who want only to make a beginning and to invite a nation to rewrite itself. We need people whose worlds have been ravaged and whose alternatives have run out and who know that Israel will not exist if it is not guided by a vision concerning its role. We need pioneers who take it on themselves to act even before the voices have been heard. When that happens we will be able to appear again before the American Jewish Committee and say: We are offering the real thing. You are invited to come and grow with us.