Israel & The Jews: The Way We Were

Described as a “peculiar people” by their own Bible, the Jews have for millennia bucked the “majority rules” paradigm to which the rest of the world bows – a defiance and the singularity of which worked for them, kept them alive, made them storied dazzlers.

But that survive-to-thrive insularity has, in the fashion of another Bible, turned that chiseled cheek – turning at the same time its back on the only way of being that’s worked for the Jews.

Israel’s might notwithstanding, its intermittent military hoorahs – or rather its capacity for them – are exactly the problem.

For the Jews, the way to victory has never been through armies or artillery, soldiers or strategy. Remember that Jews, since the time of the tiny Maccabee army, have done more with less – the original minimalists, chicly way ahead of their time.

Indeed, for the first time ever the Jewish state is what looks like a force to be reckoned with. The Israeli military is world-famous for its power, and particularly for its willingness to use it.

Not only is that not working for the Jews, it is in fact working against them.

How counter-intuitive. How peculiar.

One reason that it’s not working has to do with the incongruity between Israel’s might and Jews’ apathy – antipathy! – toward that might.

American Jews especially express a passivity and a need to please that is uncharacteristic for Jews in other parts of the world.

My suggestion that Jews have “turned the other cheek” – an allusion to that distinctly Christian ideal – was immediately muddled by my other claim that Israel is too militaristic.

If that seems incongruous, that’s because it is.

At the same time that Israel has fought defiantly for its existence, American Jews have defied that existence.

These days it’s cool to be ambivalent about Israel, cooler to be apathetic about Israel, and hot to be antipathetic to Israel – but only if you’re Jewish.

Everybody else in America is expected to – and absolutely does – fall in line with Israel on every issue … lest there be charges of anti-Semitism, another thing that cool Jews love to talk about.

In this way again the Jews’ minority status works in their favor: American Jewry can sabotage their own cause because they’re so few in number compared to the other 99% of Americans who unconditionally support them.

Seriously, Jews are the only people who dare to question Israel’s current Gaza invasion.

Journalist Michael Wolff slams Israel for “toying with Armageddon.”

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the Jewish magazine Tikkun, wrote that Israel’s actions are “stupid,” “a crime against humanity,” and “a message of hatred.”

Those are the words of a Rabbi, people … not only a Jew, but a Jewish leader.

Worse even than these statements is the indictment of Israel’s right to exist, which is indirect but implicit in the response from influential Jewish group J-Street.

The group distills the Arab-Israeli problem into “a political conflict” – the simple origin of which is, according to this group of American Jews, more of a straightforward geographical dispute than a stark Biblical mandate.

The truth is that, peculiarly, the Jewish people benefited from ostensible vulnerability. In the peculiar world of these peculiar people, vulnerability begets strength.

The Jewish people fared much better when there was congruity among them – when their mettle was their might – than now, when they’ve got power, politics, and goodwill on their side.

Here I will nick a sentiment from Michelle Obama. Now is the first time in my life that I’ve been proud of Israel – not because of the Gaza invasion, and certainly not because of the American Jewish reaction to it, but because of the military’s broadcast on YouTube of its actions.

This probably seems an odd and a small thing by which to be impressed, but like my people I am peculiar.

The YouTube broadcast, I believe, is a harbinger of a return to an earlier – less glam, less celebrated, less supported – age of Jewish solidarity through singularity.

At least that’s my peculiar hope.

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