| | A Tale of Two Miracles:
As We Celebrate AJC's Centennial and Israel's Independence,
Let Us Remember That We Are One
A Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs
May 2, 2006 Dr. Eran Lerman
Director Israel/Middle East Office
It was Moshe Sharett, the talented but tragically overshadowed second prime minister of Israel, who put it most succinctly: The Jewish world of today was shaped, he once said, by two miracles and a catastrophe. Last week we marked and mourned the catastrophe, the loss from which our people is still far from recovered, even in sheer numbers. This week, in powerful and almost eerie proximity, we shall be marking the miracles-the truly interlocking miracles-representing the two successful responses of the Jewish people to the immense challenges of modernity:
• Israel's fifty-eighth Independence Day, marked on Wednesday-which, as always, will be preceded on Tuesday by the searing grief of our Memorial Day. Many, everywhere, will be prostrate on the graves of loved ones who fell young or were torn apart by terror attacks, with almost the entire country feeling acutely the cost of our existence as a sovereign state and the ongoing challenge of survival. Then will come the sharp shift to the noisy joys of independence. These will perhaps be tempered this year, for many, by a pensive reaction to the internal tensions over last summer's Disengagement, to the election results, and to the prospect of further decisions and divisions. Still, amidst all this-for those who say the Hallel prayer on this day, and for those who do not; for those who celebrate by adopting the local version of a barbecue party (mangal , in modern Hebrew slang) and for those who watch the national Bible Quiz-there will be, underneath it all, the tinge of awe at the miraculous achievements of a small, struggling country. Poor in natural resources, a tiny patch of West Asia, a population tormented by the Jewish people's heritage and the fresh wounds of its greatest tragedy, we nevertheless rose from the ashes of the Holocaust to a good place in the ranks of the militarily powerful, economically well-to-do, scientifically successful, and culturally creative nations.
• The American Jewish Committee's Centennial-emblematic, in this context, of the immense distance that separates the position of the Jews in America and in the world today from where we sadly stood just two generations, let alone three or four generations, ago: honored-by right, not as an act of piety-by the most powerful officeholders in the world; offering a mature and measured perspective, and an invitation to lively debate, on the greatest questions of our time, including the role of religion and the structure of the international community; and bringing together the younger generation of leadership from all over the Jewish world (and the future high command of the Israeli defense establishment) to celebrate all this.
This is a time, moreover, to reassert the interconnectedness of these celebrations. Theoretically, they could have happened without each other. Practically, the essence of what we celebrate could not have been there without both: We are one, and we are codependents. Without the rising power and influence of American Jewry (yes, power: or else the Walts and Mearsheimers of this world would have left us at the mercy of the "realists" who look wistfully at the "stability" of the Saudi family as the measure of all else, in the Middle East and beyond), Israel would have been a thin shadow of what it has grown to be. Both countries would have been the poorer for that. But as often happens with what the economists call "public goods," what Israel ended up contributing to America would not have happened if it were not for the agency of a committed group of dedicated women and men, and in this case, the work of AJC and other American Jewish organizations, who envisioned both moral and practical reasons for the "special relationship."
It goes even deeper. Without the steady hand and voice of AJC speaking to American society about the need to redefine itself-to allow for the celebration of diversity, of the various historical and geographical journeys, it would not have been possible for Jews in America to ask their government to respect their association with their reborn, new "old country"-or for the Greeks and Italians and Irish; Hispanics and Africans and Chinese and Japanese; Poles and Latvians and Armenians and sub-continental Indians, to count but a few, to do the same. A profound transformation has made it possible for Jews not only to pray in the abode of their choice, but to "practice their peoplehood," if that is how they wish to describe it.
This very notion of peoplehood-still, at times, a hesitant and somewhat vague concept, and yet robust enough to sustain the immensely successful efforts that we celebrate this week-could not have come into its own, on the other hand, were it not for the emergence of the State of Israel. Try to play for a minute, in the style of Philip Roth's recent novel about Charles Lindbergh's presidency, with a counter-factual history in which, after the Holocaust, there would have been a failure to attain sovereignty (or worst, a second extermination, this time by Arab hands). It is enough to remind us what a dark world this would have been for every Jew, anywhere, if it were not for the thin line of young women and men in tattered khaki uniforms, my parents and their generation, who were willing to lay down their lives so that this cup, at least, will pass from our people's lips. And so there will be other cups and glasses raised this week-plastic cups with Coke at picnics, thin glasses of bubbly at cocktail parties, a sturdy red (we make some of the finest, right where it all began) at our tables, a toast at the gala dinner in Washington-lehayim -not just as an empty phrase: to life, and to the lives we have rebuilt together. | |
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