Independence Day and Jerusalem Day are liberation days, too - opinion
Without Israel, my Judaism is incomplete. My prayers would miss the blessings symbolizing hope and accomplishment. Israel offers me more than anyone can appreciate in a lifetime.
By ELAN ROTHKINNERET WAVES a flag on Independence Day in Ma’aleh Adumim earlier this month.(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Three generations of a Jewish family sit around a square table in a sukkah. Members of each generation face a wall symbolizing their struggles, hopes and accomplishments. A stranger sits on the fourth side of the table, invited only because of a loose ethnic connection dating back thousands of years. The stranger’s wall is blank, left unfinished.Sabba, the grandfather, arrived from Eastern Europe in the mid-1940s as a teenager, fresh off the boat, hoping to settle this Promised Land. He stares at a wall that once protected the Temple he turned to each day while in the Diaspora to pray. Now he sits in this sukkah facing that very wall, the Kotel. The Western Wall. The symbol of Jewish hope that brought his family to Israel.Abba, the father, doesn’t want to stare at his wall. Nevertheless, he fought for this wall. He feels he needs this wall. He knows he needs this wall. Too many failed negotiations, too many wars, and too many cafe bombings necessitate this wall. This wall divides him from his neighbors living in – whatever you call it – the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, the Occupied Territories. Like Sabba’s wall, it’s built to protect. So Abba sits in the sukkah gazing upon this wall that will never leave his mind.The son loves his wall not because of politics, but because his wall represents his people’s freedom and progressivism. His wall is an internal divider, a privilege granted to those that don’t fear an unrelenting fatal threat from the outside. At least to him, his wall, a mechitza, is optional. And certainly not a wall of protection. He is the only one looking to tear down his wall to indulge his desire to sit next to his young, progressive-minded wife while davening. Praying the same words that his grandfather, who never considered standing next to a woman while praying, first uttered hundreds of miles away.To unforgiving outsiders, this should not be my story to tell. I am not one of these people. I am an Ashkenazi, adamantly-egalitarian, tzitzit-wearing, Conservative, mostly public-school-educated, born after 9/11 American Jew. Yet, nevertheless, I am a Jew. My soul stood at Mount Sinai with Moshe Rabbeinu, with David Ben-Gurion, with your cousin who renounced Judaism, with the Poles who learned only in their mid-20s that they were Jewish, and with these generations of Israel-based Zionists.I am the stranger in this sukkah. I live thousands of miles away, unable to vote in Israel’s elections and not planning to serve in its army. My passport says “United States of America” and I have not mastered Israel’s national language.Yet, I see myself as this welcoming family’s partner in Zionism. I come to Israel as often as I can, following its elections (sometimes more closely than America’s) and fighting against those who oppose Israel’s existence. I am their partner because my passport is covered with stamps from Ben-Gurion Airport and I practice my Hebrew every day. Independence Day and Jerusalem Day are my holidays, holy days, Days of Liberation too. My connection to these Israelis is as strong as my connection to Abraham and Sarah who settled this land long before me.Without Israel, my Judaism is incomplete. My prayers would miss the blessings symbolizing hope and accomplishment. When I arrived in Jerusalem for my gap year with the Shalom Hartman Institute, I stood atop my apartment building’s roof to daven Shacharit facing northeast, not my usual due east. I said “Baruch atah hashem boneh yerushalayim” – as I stared at cranes building Jerusalem, precisely what I requested in this blessing; uttering the same words of Sabba in his time of hope and Abba in his time of accomplishment.Israel offers me more than anyone can appreciate in a lifetime. A place of refuge from the global disease of antisemitism, a home for my gap year, a greasy shawarma wrap prepared to the poetic songs of Ishay Ribo. I appreciate the security, the growth, the culture. Israel is where my religion and secular-seeming lifestyle marry in some beautifully unimaginable way. Israel is where I can flaunt my kippah and tzitzit without fear of judgment or violence. This guarantee exists nowhere else.I am constantly reminded of this story, the three generations that founded and formed the land that will never turn me away. My necklace that reads “chai,” life, reminds me of the paratroopers liberating the Kotel in 1967, renewing Jewish control after nearly two thousand years. My Meretz-supporting and Likud-voting friends remind me of the barrier built during the Second Intifada and its unanswerable dilemmas regarding security and bigotry. My female friends with whom I daven and wrap tefillin remind me of the choice that Jews now have, whether or not to perpetuate divisions between our communities within the same country.
I sit in this strange yet familiar sukkah, staring blankly at this unfinished wall wondering what might be my contribution to Zionism. Will I enter university politics to try expelling antisemitic and anti-Zionist organizations from spreading lies and hate? Will I work in engineering to collaborate with Israeli start-ups? The only thing I know is that my passion for Judaism and Zionism will guide my life, ensuring the opportunities granted to me for future generations of world Jewry. I will not know my contribution until I am like these generations of diverse Zionists staring directly at it, through their rearview mirrors. What will my wall be?The writer, 18, from Westchester, New York, co-founded Lishmah, the pluralistic Jewish daily learning system, and is a participant in Hevruta, the Shalom Hartman Institute’s gap year program in Jerusalem.
