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Never Never Land June-3-2010
I’ve written a column about Jewish parenting for eight years, first at the Forward and for the last year at Tablet Magazine. In that time, I’ve written 11 pieces about Jewish children’s books, nine about the High Holidays, seven about Passover, six about the Jewish female body, four about summer camp, three about Sukkot, and two each about vaccines, organ donation, and Tu B’Shevat. I am painfully aware that I have never, not once, written about Israel.
That’s because I am deeply ambivalent about Israel. Modern-day Israel, as opposed to historical Israel, is a subject I avoid with my children. Yes, of course I believe the state should exist, but the word “Zionist” makes me skittish. (I understand that I may be the Jewish equivalent of all the twentysomething women I want to smack for saying, “I’m not a feminist, but I believe in equal rights.”) I shy away from conversations about Israeli politics. I feel no stirring in my heart when I see the Israeli flag. I would no sooner attend an Israel Day parade than a Justin Bieber concert. Neither Abe Foxman nor AIPAC speaks for me. I am a liberal, and I am deeply troubled by the Matzav, Israeli shorthand for tension with the Palestinians, and I do not have answers, and I do not know what to do about it, and I do not know what to tell my children.
So, it was with a huge sense of identification and relief that I read Peter Beinart’s controversial essay in the New York Review of Books last week. As you no doubt know, Beinart, an associate professor of journalism and political science at CUNY and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote that leading Jewish institutions viscerally reject opposition to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and of the country’s Arab citizens, and this has made younger non-Orthodox Jews like me—who are deeply committed to human rights around the world, who reject being told what to think and do without the airing of all points of view, who have issues with military force—turn away from Jewish communal organizations and refrain from even thinking about, let alone identifying with, the state of Israel.
“Having kids definitely played a role” in his writing of this essay, Beinart told Tablet’s Marc Tracy. “I think it made me think about not just my Zionist identity, but what kind of Zionism was available to them. And the more I thought about that, the more I began to worry.” In the piece, he mentioned that he could imagine his children, who attend an Orthodox shul, winding up either among the apathetic college students identified in a recent survey who don’t identify at all with Zionism, or among the right-wingers who boo when the notion of Palestinian suffering is even mentioned at an Israel solidarity rally. “Either prospect fills me with dread,” he writes.
Oh, dude. I can relate.
This article was reprinted with permission from Tablet Magazine. To read the rest of this article, please visit http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/34105/never-never-land/.
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