The Jewish Story: The Questions which Drive the Jewish Story Post - 1948

poets sister Luigi Hoskins make the best topographers now I'm far from a poet but I do love words and you might even call me a storyteller and when I look ahead on the road I see on the rise in mountains and valleys the likes of which we have not yet seen cuz I'm not my choir and this is the Jewish story prologue to season 3 the questions that drive the Jewish story post 1948 and we all believe what actors writing our own script or at least we see ourselves as freewill agents moving in an undefined world and I largely agree with this assumption but nevertheless it's important also to know that our lives in the lives of Nations take place within a complex space and one that's not entirely of our making or even our choice the question is how do those two work together when it comes to our story well first of all I deeply believe that we have to cultivate the consciousness that we are indeed free and we have to take action within the belief that not only do our choices matter but that they can change the world this is the deep power of the Divine within the human being our ability to transcend any story and really make the world have it at the same time I feel we have an obligation to use our best tools to map the topography on which our lives or the lives of our people are playing out and that's because to me topography is way more than a physical phenomenon every story be it fiction or non has some sort of landscape on which it unfolds and for the present purposes of introducing season 3 of the Jewish story I want to say that the topography of a story consists of three essential elements not surprisingly past present and future so first we have the inherited structures of the past these can be economic social intellectual what-have-you right a lot of this is the root of the progressive discourse around structural violence these aspects of power that are built into our social and political structures it's also a lot of the critique that Marx made when it came to economics and of course this the problem of cognitive limitations we don't just inherit what we know from the past we inherit how we know and it always begs the question of whether there isn't the world waiting right at the edge of our consciousness that we simply haven't learned to see so that's one part of the topography and it's an important one these inherited structures of the past then of course there's the present landscape rooted in the actual geography where our story takes place never undervalue the impact that place has on our experience and that's why post 1948 with the birth of the nation state in the Land of Israel our story is going to take some pretty wild turns that we haven't seen for quite some time so there's that actual geography that makes up the present landscape and then there are the driving questions which give their energy to the issues of the day that's a very big part of the present and finally last but certainly not least there are the visions of the future those dreams that guide and inspire understanding not only of the past but guiding our actions in the present now obviously all three of these things are bound up together and in my eyes at least there's only ever really one topography on which a story unfolds all the disputes and confusion we have are just the results of how well or poorly we map it and that's what I want to do going forward in the Jewish story not just to tell the story in the sense of a linear tale through time but begin to unearth a topography on which it's taking place in order to give us a deeper appreciation and to empower us to make it go where we think it ought so in terms of the past we've been engaged with that for some time and I have no intention of stopping in season three don't worry I do believe that the pace of my linear presentation of history is gonna have to slow down there's a lot of research to be done but God willing that's only going to allow the content to deepen and I want to make a call right now actually send me your questions please send me your thoughts on what you think matters tell me what you want to know I can't make any promises but if you don't ask you probably won't hear it so like I said we've done a lot of mapping of the inherited structures of our past over the last two years and therefore I think we have a reasonable grasp of the pass typography on which the coming season is going to take place and of course I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm always ready to talk about the future if you know me well the Messiah is right around the corner and if the messianic theme ran is a current through season two at this point in season three it's gonna need to be an ongoing discussion and it's part of that I plan on seeking out people to help them share their visions with you and I their visions of the future and I think it's a critical part of what we're doing so send me your thoughts there as well who do I need to speak to who's out there right now propagating some vision of M Israel that's critical to the Jewish story let me know cuz I certainly don't know everybody so that's the past in the future two critical elements of the ground for any good story but right now I want to talk about the questions that I feel driving the present because even though this is the prologue to another season about the past yeah God willing it's gonna be devoted to the years 1948 to 1967 every story of course is told in the present and I have a sense that there are certain question which are really present for Ami's rail right now that can serve as an important frame for understanding the post 1948 phase of the Jewish story now we can't possibly ask every question in order I pretend to know what all the important ones are but ahead is a bit of a mapping of some critical issues some critical questions and I want to offer it to you within three dimensions of relationship the first one is um the art so a people in its land there's a whole new world or at least an old new world as they say that's born into our story with the return of um israel to an embodied existence in the land of israel there will be very particular questions that emerge from that the second dimension within which i want to consider our questions this topography is the Jewish people in diaspora your people as a whole who aren't bound by the land in the third piece oldie but goodie which has caused no bit of excitement in our story up there now is the relationship of Israel among the nations and since that one is kind of always on my mind maybe we should start there as I see it the central question between Israel and the nations at this stage of our story is did Zionism succeed in solving the Jewish problem or not does the recreation of Israel as a member of the polity of nations so neatly defined by the UN in the 40s reconcile this very old and problematic relationship now remember the question of how Israel fits in among the nations was not posed by 19th century European emancipation it's been there since our inception as a people it's bound up with the exodus from Egypt and the Torah at Sinai and we've been following it in the Jewish story since the last national phase of the Second Temple period I'm sure remember but just making moment to recall the three Roman Jewish Wars which it took to establish that the Judean 's were the indigestible element of the Roman Empire unwilling to bow completely to foreign rule this is what I've been calling the spirit of the Maccabees that somewhat wild and powerful notion that sovereignty over particular geography is necessary to fulfill our destiny now the Romans temporarily broke the back of that idea and they succeeded in uprooting aasif from our land effectively finishing the job of transforming the Judean into the Jew but even once that landed national element was erased from our story the problem of Israel amongst the nations did not go away when Christianity inherited the Roman Empire the Jews simply morphed from the ended Jessel element of empire into the obstinate refuser of christian salvation and through this transformation the mutual national antagonism that existed between Israel and the nations as really an embodied landed form was now cemented into place by religion making the inability of Israel to fit the world structure a theological problem and therefore transnational there are after all no borders to religious hatred and there's been a lot of water on the bridge in our story since the rise of Christianity and we've seen that there are major elements of the Jewish story that lie entirely out of its context nevertheless when we have to think about the rise of the state in 48 we have to think about the origins of Zionism in Europe and therefore if we scroll forward from Christianity will find that the question of Israel's right posture amongst the nations arises once again in modern Europe as the Jewish problem no it first comes up as kind of a universal moral problem within the context of the progressive secularization of European intellectual culture basically what happened is that the Christian intellects used to ask does that you have a right to salvation and now the secular intellects will ask is the Jew a human like any other and that moral question will become a political one with the spread of the citizenship model throughout Europe in modernity and the subsequent rise of the issue of Jewish emancipation you know the story if not go back and listen to season two no matter how you look at it but the end of the 19th century we're gonna find racial anti-semitism indeed asserting no the Jew is not really human and political anti-semitism saying whether he's human or not he's not welcome as a citizen and so we'll find that from indigestion of the Roman Empire to obstinate refuser of Christian salvation that Jew has become the alien other of modern society and we know how that phase ends it isn't pretty so that's my question right now Zionism harnessed the momentum of nationalism the freedom of secular culture and the idealism of progressive thought in order to do this seemingly impossible in in 1948 the third Jewish Commonwealth was born I'm there right now but did it solve the Jewish problem and furthermore keep in mind however you answer that question your response will save volumes about what you believe the question really was to begin with what do I mean well on some level we've charted out a story in which our very existence is the cause of the problem between Israel and the nation's I mean in adjustable obstinate alien those aren't about our actions they're about our essence and if that's the case then the Zionist dream of becoming a nation like every other is kind of doomed from the outset but I'm convinced that Israel's posture amongst the nations is not solely defined simply by who we are but it's also a product of what we do so going forward as we chart the relationship between Israel and the nations in the coming season I do want to keep an eye on that classic formulation of the Jewish Question how are we in the nations going to get along and that's a problem to be solved one which the Zionists may or may not have figured out but I also want to keep in mind a different angle on the Jewish question which is what's the purpose of our relationship with the nations because I'm interested in looking at the Jew not just as a problem to be solved but also as a mission to be fulfilled so the next dimension that we have to consider is Israel in exile now I know the Exile has become a bit of a dirty word in our day so in order to address it we just have to remember that being in exile is not simply a geographic phenomenon it is heart it's really an inner state defined by the sense that I belong elsewhere and once you internalize that you realize that exile doesn't pertain solely to the national historical plane of existence it can begin as an individual's experience of alienation from essential self we do things and sometimes we judge ourselves saying that's not who I am that's not what I want to do and in doing so we experience a sense of alienation now notice that alienation is rooted in the notion that I am other than I'm acting meaning I have a chorus sense that I've drifted away from where I really belong and I'm living in personal exile if I didn't feel that way then I would just call it growth there are plenty of things that I never did before that once I do them they become part of who I am but so long as I feel I've moved away from some essential self and I experienced that as alien age this also has exile exile can also be on a much bigger scale can be that deep existential longing that all creation must unite with the source that will give truth to that beautiful notion of an ode Malvado that there is no other but that's a discussion on a pay grade slightly above mine for our purposes even on the national historical plane as it's generally understood meaning of people driven from their land exile still depends on the belief that I ought to be elsewhere I mean take the Turks for instance they don't see themselves as in exile from Central Asia that's because they left there and now they live in Turkey stranger that they found a country to match their name right Wacka Wacka but you get my point is that if one leaves and finds home where they are then they're no longer in exile and that's why I can tell you today that many of my American students are no longer in exile they've come to Israel to learn but they don't feel that America is a foreign country even the softened notion of diaspora meaning that they live at the edge of the people who Center is somewhere other than where they live speaks to them less and less and in the coming season we're gonna pursue the development of that consciousness because upon investigation it turns out to be powerful and very interesting parallel to that foundational Zionist notion of Chile lotta galoot the negation of exile because the Zionists thought that they would have to get rid of exile in the simplest sense and go back to the Land of Israel but there's always been a redemptive stream at least since modernity within the Jewish people that has seen the negation of exile as getting rid of that sense that we belong somewhere else okay but for now I'm just framing the key questions and in this dimension of the relationship between the Jews of the land and the Jews of the world I'll put the question like this what does it mean to be a Jew once you can also be an Israeli and I see this as an essential element in the topography of our story because it will push us to look past be simply social and political layers of the relationship between Israeli and diaspora jure toward questions of essence what does it actually mean to be a Jew right now to be an Israeli one the other both and there's a lot to be explored here doing so it's gonna be part of my personal mission to push us away from a discourse of technical power which centers around that question who is a Jew and closer to a more essential discussion of mission what is a Jew so that's the first question then I see in this dimension of Diaspora in Israeli Jewry but there's a second critical question that I want to raise specifically from the perspective of non Israeli Jew and that is what does healing from the Holocaust look like in the Diaspora you know there's a phenomenon that I like to think of as historical mastication I know it's an awkward word but it still appeals me and it's how we digest the things that history serves up to us as we travel along the way I'm sure you have a sense that this is not a simple question because obviously some things slide naturally down the gullet others make us a gag and some are simply too big to swallow and this isn't just a historical question I can tell you from years of spiritual counseling work that for the individual the steps of a not choking on what life hands you be getting your teeth around whatever it is and then CDE chew swallow digest our Adel lifetime of work and therefore the Jewish story tells me that on the national scale is not gonna be a lifetime of work but a work of generations after all we've been digesting the slavery in Egypt for 3,000 plus years and apparently we'll go on doing so until that great day that Jeremiah predicted let it be soon let it be now but when it shall be no more said as the Lord lives who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt but rather as the Lord lives who brought the Israelites out of the Northland and out of all the lands to which he had banished them so I can tell from this that the process of digesting the events of the first half of the 20th century is going to be prolonged and for our present purposes the question of how we didn't choke on the Holocaust or the task of birthing the state will be a major driver for story of head and of course digesting the Holocaust and the state will look very different in America than it does in Israel despite the shared elements of the experience there the lessons that we extract from both and the methods that we use to bind their wounds conscious or not are going to be a major divider and uniter within the Israeli diaspora relationship and they're going to cast a very heavy shadow on what it means to be a Jew post 1948 alright last dimension now we began with the posture of Israel amongst the nations and what 1948 means that question in other words did the Zionists succeed in solving the Jewish problem with the birth of the modern state and then I asked about the relationship between diaspora jury in Israel and what it actually means to be a Jew now that you can also be an Israeli and it might just be when I asked that question that you heard the echoes of an equally complicated problem and that is what does it mean to be an Israeli if you are not a Jew this is a question that grows more pressing every day here at our fair country and it's part of a much larger issue that's going to underlie the whole season going forward we could take it in any number of directions but the reality of a non Jewish Israeli raises the whole question of a resin ship between Torah on Israel the Land of Israel and the civil state one symbol but painful example just imagine the young Russian combat soldier who dies god forbid defending not just the state of israel really the people of israel now according to the classical logic jewish legal definitions it happens to be that this young russian soldier whose mother is not Jewish he's not considered Jewish himself but from the perspective of the people of the nation and even how would argue from the narrative this person is certainly a central part of the Jewish story and so it comes to a head that on one hand the religious discourse does not allow for burial in the same cemetery as his fellow soldiers on the other hand the national discourse wants to elevate him as high as the holy throne you see the challenge here and I can boil that challenge down to a very basic question which lies at the heart of this dimension on bart so of people in its land what does it actually mean to be a people in our land and this is going to be a big thread for us there's a few pieces that are worth contemplating in that light first of all we've got to look for the creativity Morena remainder of cook tells us that one of the real signs of the Jewish rebirth of the rebirth of a people that comes from re-entry into land will be the rebirth of our creative energies Jewish music Jewish literature the access to the holy creativity that can give new forms to divine presence through our actions and I'm gonna look out those elements of the story as well once again shoot me your thoughts I'm happy to speak to almost anyone that's one number two we're gonna have to ask the question about the impact of simply being home of settling if you will I hope you remember that back in season two it actually season one as well we started this team in the notion that I'm Israel in exile was an emulsion it all started with that story from my daughter about her first DVAR Torah when she took a fork and some oil on top of water and began to stir and said just like oil doesn't mix with water so - Israel doesn't mix with the nations of the world and I told you that I became fascinated not just with the obvious fact that oil and water don't mix but with the fact that as you beat the oil at the fork it breaks up and ceases to mix with itself as well becomes an emulsion bound together by an internal cohesion which we Jews know quite well but separated each glob of oil from the next by an external phobia the fear of the water not only holds the water off but ends up dividing each little glob of oil from the next and that's so much of our history at this point we've been so broken into subsets of subsets of Jews over the course of two thousand years of exile that coming back to our land we hardly look like speak like or even think like one another and the whoa not the only but one of the only solution to an emulsion is to simply let it settle you gotta wonder what a nice rail will look like three hundred years from now having finally found peace in our land that's an important one but really what I'm super excited to finally focus on in the coming season is the second half of a phrase that has followed us from the very beginning of our story me Binet hata a new Galena may arts a new because of our sins we were exiled from our land we've looked at this idea it's of course a phrase that's built into our liturgy in the additional prayer of the festival services we've looked at it as an expression of a maintenance of a historical agency because if we were driven from our lands because of our sins well then we'll get back there because of our meets vote because of our merits it's a way in which our sages taught us to maintain historical agency even when all the classic structures a land a government a military an economy had been taken away from us nevertheless we were not just a ship tossed by the sea of other people's experience but we're able to guide ourselves gradually through the darkness of exile on home well that was the ideal of that phrase but we've seen how as time passed and the darkness of exile not only Langton but deepen that the understanding of that phrase morphed first from the notion of historical agency into a sense of intergenerational guilt I mean because our sins we were exiled from the land which sins were those seems like we're playing out somebody else's story here and that itself somewhat quickly became the source of what I would call a historical existential resentment I mean it's pretty easy to picture the average Zionists responding to that line they thought to Anna Magdalena might say no because of our sins we were exiled from our land with the angry challenge that he has Gil Ezekiel records a vote Yahoo VOSA machine--a up on Mt Hanna what the parents ate sour grapes and their children's teeth should hurt I know you probably didn't say with the Yiddish accent but for now with at least the reality of the physical exile coming to an end I mean after all if you want to come home you could just get out of an airplane we can finally engage the second half of that in the vertical line right it's not cuz not just meet Nathan and Ellie in America say no it's also the rock new nod Montana we were literally distanced or I would say is strange from our soil and that's what I see to be the task really lying ahead what does Ami's rail look like when we're planted firmly in our land you know to me I feel like we could tell the story of the last 2000 years of Exile as a continual planting and replanting of the Torah it's almost as if the tour itself is a seed and where have you planned it boof amis rail springs up you plant an acorn in North Africa comes up as an oak in Spain comes up as an oak pole in Babylon Brooklyn wherever now it's true that according to the soil on the climate and the growth conditions each oak will look different but they're all oak trees so we might think that what we'll get here in Israel is just a more robust oak a tree at last planted in its native soil or maybe just maybe what it actually means to finally be um Bart so of people in its land is that we'll discover that the seed metaphor is not entirely Act and that when we plant on Israel in its land it's going to bring forth a growth that we've actually never seen now there's so much to be explored there and it's tied deeply for familiar with it the rough cooks notion of Torah and red sea sail what is the Torah that comes out of that mysterious and powerful combination of the people of Israel with the land of Israel so that's gonna be yet another question that we'll pursue in season 3 there's one last question in this dimension of um Bart so of people in its land that I want to put out there before we wrap up and that's a parallel to what we asked before what does healing look like here now the relationship between the State of Israel and the Shoah has a lot of layers and we'll explore many of them but for now it's important to put my finger on the fact that in a certain sense these two events have served one another it may sound uncomfortable but it's true nonetheless because the confidence and he really you phoria over the return and the victory bound up with it has been a major element that's helped us swallow the ashes that threatened to choke us from Auschwitz and of course the shadow of death that the camp's left on our hearts and minds has been a very significant motivator in the 70 year war we fought since then but what I want to know is what does healing look like when we're finally people in our land healing from the camp's healing from the battlefield healing from 2,000 years of wandering so we have to keep our eye out to see if that healing is happening at all and if so what exactly we can do to help make it progress so here we have it a bit of a topography underlying the Jewish story ahead in the form of the questions that arise out of these three dimensions first Israel's place amongst the nation did the victory of the political Zionism solve the Jewish problem or we at just a new step from the indigestible to the obstinate to the alien to who knows now there's also that next question which is Israel in diaspora what does it mean to be a Jew and you can also be an Israel and in particular when you choose not to and then we have um the arts so the people in its land the precious gift that we've received in our time to be among the first generations to be even able to ask the question in the last two thousand years what does it mean to be a people in our land and for me like I said through all of these dimensions underneath all of these questions lies the theme of healing and I hope you know by now that this is really what I'm after it's true the tagline of the Jewish story is telling us the story of the past in order to build the present identity in the which is motivated to get us the future which we want to live but that itself is about telling a healing story where else the motive come from other than knowing the source of my pains and being committed to fixing them and I'm deeply concerned with the fractured state of our people after the long exile and in particular after the 20th century you can ask my kids I weep every day about the Shoah sometimes openly I'm also quite alarmed about the raw wounds of our hundred year war that we're fighting here that war of conquest and therefore wounds that we share with the Arab people's all around us I'm also concerned about the fact that it sometimes seems to me that there's a certain element of psychodrama in those wounds that we may just need them right now for reasons that are less than clear I'm however with us things I have to say on some level a most broken by the thought that they're punished of them that God wants so much more for creation that we as a species we as a people we as individuals are capable of telling a story that could bring the whole world together and we're not yet doing it so that's the goal going forward to tell our story and at the same time to unearth the topography of that inheritance in the past the questions driving the present and the visions lighting our future and to do so in a way that will bind creation back together so as long as we're here at the end of the prologue that's the beginning of season 3 I wanna invite you to take the time right now to help me make history go to WWE Josh story CEO there in the upper right hand corner you'll see a little box it says be a patron and you can click on through to give a little bit of her podcast support and I'll say thank you now because you'll be joining all those people who give their hard-earned money to help make this show possible to keep it free and make it widely distributed don't hesitate if you're not up for a per pod cast element encourage you to dedicate a show people are doing it all the time you can reach out to me at Ralph's Mike Feuer at gmail.com or you can find me on facebook at Rob Mike foyer or the Jewish story podcast just let me know I'm happy to dedicate a show both to the living and the decease so as long as I'm at it I want to thank the Land of Israel Network that's the Land of Israel calm for making a platform that allows me to reach so many amazing people I want to thank the partes Institute VAR d s org dot IL for building an educational institution that allows me to teach such a wonderful Jews and I want to thank you for listening I'm not Mike Feuer